^ .J. 























Glass 
Book. 



> M-V-4 - 



CopightN^. 



COPYRrGHT DEPOSm 



THE RIGHT TO BELIEVE 



THE EIGHT TO BELIEVE 



BY 



ELEANOR HAREIS ROWLAND, Ph.D. 

INSTRUCTOR IN PHILOSOPHY AND PSYCHOLOGY 
IN MOUNT HOLYOKE COLLEGE 



^A^t^^v^u^ Ha>v>u^l)'^<^vOH:^»--^/^ "^? 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

1909 






COPYRIGHT, 1909, BY ELEANOR HARRIS ROWLAND 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 

Published September iqog 



248314 



f/^ 






X 







TO MY FATHER 
LYMAN SIBLEY ROWLAND, D.D. 

TO WHOSE CRITICISM AND APPROVAL 

I WOULD SO GLADLY SUBMIT 

THIS BOOK 



CONTENTS 

Introduction ix 

I. The Necessity for a Belief ... 1 

IL Does God Exist ? 16 

III. The Nature o'f God and of Man • . 65 

IV. The Divinity of Christ .... 105 
V. The Problem of Evil . . . • . 140 

VI. Prayer 169 



INTRODUCTION 

In these days of many books, the appearance 
of a new volume seems to demand from its 
author a justification of his right to foist 
more print on an already over-burdened public. 
This explanation is the more necessary, if his 
book treats of subjects in a field which is not 
his own ; for specialized knowledge has come 
to be the one requisite of all serious authorship; 
and in order to put some brakes on too ready 
pens, we demand that every man shall stick to 
his trade. Yet with all this, there exists a cer- 
tain reverence for facts, whether their ex- 
ploiter has run across them by chance or by 
intention. An astronomer has the right to 
make by-observations on the flights of birds, 
even though his telescope be pointed at the 
moon ; nothing need prevent a man from ob- 
serving plant heredity even though his pro- 
fession be that of a cloistered monk ; and if a 
teacher of psychology has happened upon some 
religious facts may he not express them, 
granted that they are facts ? 

My profession is one that naturally gives 



X INTRODUCTION 

rise to questions, and its members are ex- 
pected to give answers on subjects and in 
terms that scarcely lie within the field of their 
special knowledge. It is also true, that among 
the thinking public of America, philosophical 
problems present themselves, as a rule, in a re- 
ligious guise, and that, when any one asks of a 
philosophically minded person the solution of 
such a problem, he wants an answer in his own 
terms, not in a vocabulary to which he is not 
used, and which either confuses or chills him 
by its strangeness. 

The facts, then, are these. I have happened to 
engage in discussion with some twenty persons, 
whose minds were more or less at sea in re- 
ligious matters ; and while their starting-points 
were different, their difficulties fell into some- 
what well-defined types. The method which 
I suggested for answering certain of these 
questions was an apparent help in enough 
cases to justify me in thinking it could stand 
the test of a wider audience. To any criticism 
of the book (and there may be many) I can 
always reply : It has answered the questions 
of a dozen people. I claim for it nothing 
more. 

There are four types of doubter to which 



INTRODUCTION xi 

I am accustomed. The first is the ordinary 
student of college grade who wishes to believe 
in religious truth^ but is troubled by the ne- 
cessary readjustment of his old beliefs. The 
second is the professional thinker who is es- 
pecially trained in philosophical thought and 
language, and who, if he has any prejudice, 
is likely to have it rather against the ordinary 
formulas of religion than for them. These 
two classes share, however, certain respect 
for authority, the one for the orthodox reli- 
gion, the other for recognized philosophical 
systems ; and they have a background of ac- 
quaintance with standard questions and an- 
swers. The third type is the business man, 
who is untrained in school thinking, but who 
possesses a large share of the logic of com- 
merce, and who recognizes the social and civic 
importance of religious institutions. He is apt 
to feel an interest in religious matters, if for 
no other reason, because of his church-going 
friends, and because as a citizen he is called 
upon to support parish expenses. He sees that 
religion is a powerful motive with many 
people, and would like to know what it is all 
about. He is curious and conscientious, but he 
feels that the time for any emotional expres- 



xii INTRODUCTION 

sion is past for him, and since sermons do not 
appeal to his common sense, he leaves them to 
his family, and only airs his doubts and opin- 
ions when he is sure that he can do so without 
hurting feelings which he respects but does not 
understand. Lastly, there is the man I class 
broadly as ^^ heathen," because he frankly 
considers himself in that light! So far as 
knowledge of creeds, respect for authority, 
reverence for any conceivable thing, or care 
for his own or other souls is concerned, he can 
be classed under no other head. Without preju- 
dice for or against any belief, but taking a 
lively interest in the discussion of all of them, 
he is ready to embrace brahminism or faith- 
healing with equal blitheness. In a certain 
sense he is the most impartial thinker of any, 
being equally disposed toward any creed or 
none ; and he possesses a certain honesty and 
good nature, which represent practically the 
only virtues for which he has a shadow of re- 
spect. 

While I am more familiar with the first two 
classes in point of numbers, my discussions 
with a few of the latter were so much more 
thorough (since they took nothing for 
granted), that I feel that as examples they 



INTRODUCTION xiii 

have a value in intensiveness which they lack 
in extent. 

That there are many other classes of people 
who grope for religious light, and demand it 
in a more emotional form, is doubtless true. 
They would be untouched by this sort of dis- 
cussion. But I can only repeat that, with a 
certain number of people in private conversa- 
tion, the same questions and the same answers 
have developed naturally. Their questions all 
imply an initial interest in religion from what- 
ever motive, and a demand for a rational belief, 
and for fearlessness in its statement, which to 
others might be disconcerting. 

It has seemed to me that religion, to be of 
real use in a modern world, should be capable 
of experimental treatment, and of unfettered 
discussion, which for the sake of a more com- 
plete final belief takes for the time being no- 
thing for granted, and holds nothing sacred. 
The reverential attitude which is natural and 
proper for certain types of believers is un- 
natural and artificial for a large majority of 
the world, and this other class demands a 
meeting on its own ground, and a calm reason 
given in its own terms, before it will listen 
further. 



xiv INTRODUCTION 

This is said to forestall the possible com- 
ment^ that great truths are handled in the fol- 
lowing pages with a briskness that is not in 
harmony with their significance. But it has 
always been my observation, that a great 
truth, like a great man, cannot be made 
mean by the cut of its clothes. The atmos- 
phere of these discussions is the one in which 
my questioners found it easiest to move; I 
give it as they gave it to me, and hasten to 
assure my reader that their attitude, while al- 
ways critical and often humorous, was never 
flippant, and was prompted always by an hon- 
est desire for the truth. 

There will probably be some in my audience 
who will recognize in the following discus- 
sions recastings of old arguments, which 
would seem to demand some mention of their 
original voicer. The book, in fact, shows the 
influence of so many thinkers, past and pres- 
ent, that any indication of sources would be 
impossible. The author often does not know 
whether she is plagiarizing or not, so entirely 
have certain habits of thought become her 
own, and she acknowledges herself a debtor 
to any thinking person who has crossed her 
path ! 



INTRODUCTION xv 

Any to whom these discussions seem un- 
necessary must not read the book. Those to 
whom no questions occur can afford to leave 
them unanswered ; but those minds haunted 
by an unresting criticism of the world they 
live in have no choice but to question. 

E. H. R. 

September, 1909. 



THE RIGHT TO BELIEVE 



THE NECESSITY FOR A BELIEF 

There must always be a common starting-point 
for fellow travelers, no matter how far afield 
their several journeys may end, some mutual 
solid spot of ground, however airy the subse- 
quent flight; and on this meeting-place we 
must agree, if we are to understand one an- 
other. 

To be as thorough as possible, then, let us 
begin by doubting every shred of religious be- 
lief. Some of us, perhaps, do not really find 
ourselves in such an extremity; on the other 
hand, many of us do, and in order to start to- 
gether we must try to strip ourselves of every 
creed, and face the situation of one who not 
only doubts, but sincerely disbelieves every re- 
ligious tenet with which he is acquainted. 

If we have found difiiculties with religion, 
if we can live easily without it, why not throw 
it overboard at once, and live a quiet life with- 
out ? This is the method we employ with other 



2 THE RIGHT TO BELIEVE 

outgrown ideas. We believed in Santa Claus, 
we had difficulties in making him square with 
the rest of experience, so we abandoned him 
altogether. We had primitive notions of various 
sciences, which we outgrew without a pang, 
and have not felt the slightest responsibility 
toward them since. Why, then, should we not 
take the same attitude toward religious truth? 
If we find a belief in God, in immortality, in 
Christ, in prayer, difficult and irrational, what 
possible compunction need we have in drop- 
ping the subject forever? 

Surely this question cannot be answered by 
saying that we owe it to God to believe in Him, 
because as yet we do not believe that He exists. 
The commands of the Bible are without weight, 
since we have no belief in its authority; and 
that we are adjured to believe by certain de- 
votees need have no more weight than any 
other unjustified demand. Why, then, do we 
concern ourselves at all in the matter? If 
there were not some vitality in these questions, 
they would have died a natural death long ago ; 
and while we maintain our right not to be in- 
terested in the subject, the fact remains that 
we are interesting ourselves with it, at this 
very moment ; and why are we doing it ? 



THE NECESSITY FOR A BELIEF 3 

Probably the reasons why we have not 
dropped our belief in religion without a strug- 
gle, or the reasons why, though we are without 
belief, religion still possesses a certain interest 
for us in spite of its irrationality, are some- 
what similar. One reason is that, in spite of in- 
dividual differences in our training and tem- 
perament, religious questions are so interwoven 
with our whole social life that an absolute ignor- 
ing of them is impossible. Every Sunday we 
see the astonishing spectacle of crowds of peo- 
ple going to church, addressing prayers to an 
unseen Presence, and taking upon themselves 
the expounding of his character. Public cere- 
monies are opened with prayer, it is considered 
fitting to christen children with prayer, and we 
feel a poetry in this exercise for the old, as 
well. Moreover, since constant decisions must 
be made between two courses, one of which we 
call right, the other wrong, we are obliged to 
ask ourselves whether the distinction is a valid 
one, and whether we are not fools for our 
pains, if we sacrifice an advantage to an ideal 
which we cannot defend. Or if we call our- 
selves outside the pale of all this religious and 
moral activity, the very fact that we do so 
constantly drives home the fact that we are 



4 THE RIGHT TO BELIEVE 

in some important respect different from the 
rest of the world, and we wonder if they can 
explain their position as well as we explain 
ours. Further than all this, when we outgrow 
the Santa Glaus superstition and childish scien- 
tific notions, we feel no regrets, because we 
have replaced them by something broader and 
more satisfying, and we can afford to smile at 
them in the light of a more extensive know- 
ledge. But if we have lost our religious beKef, 
nothing entirely takes its place. Philosophy 
is frankly unable to supply a substitute. Like 
science it simply leaves the way open for a man 
to accept certain views if he chooses, and does 
not pretend to supply the vigorous belief in 
unseen things that religion holds as its special 
trust. If this indifferent state of mind is wholly 
satisfying to a man in regard to the matter; 
if he is content to be out of it and allow these 
religious questions to remain unanswered, what 
shall we say? As a free being, he has the right 
to choose what he will accept and what he will 
ignore, but as a thinking being he must do it 
with his eyes open. He must not suppose that 
his ignoring a religious belief is a proof of its 
falsity, any more than the reiterations of a be- 
liever are proofs of its truth. There were three 



THE NECESSITY FOR A BELIEF 5 

Simple and apparently obvious Laws o£ Thought 
expounded by Aristotle, the third of which is 
called the " Law of Excluded Middle." The 
substance of this axiom is " A thing must either 
be or not be "; and while its statement seems 
obvious to the point of flatness, we ignore its 
truth during a large part of our lives. This 
rule means simply that in the case of two contra- 
dictory statements, one or the other must be 
true. There are but two alternatives to face, 
with any belief — religious or otherwise: — 
either it is true, or it is not true; there is no 
middle ground. 

Therefore a logical man who abandons one 
side of the controversy because it is not sup- 
ported by facts, must not remain on the other 
unless that is adequately proved ; but at the 
same time he cannot avoid being on one side 
or the other. The difficulty here arises, that the 
contradictory proposition may be as unproved 
as the first, and yet logically one or the other 
must be true, — a third possibility is excluded. 

In any such situation as this, if the second 
proposition can be satisfactorily proved, the 
doubter finds rest and goes no further; but 
the fact of the matter is, that belief in unbelief 
is as difficult to support as belief in religious 



6 THE RIGHT TO BELIEVE 

truths, and the logical man, who demands a 
reason, is thereby tossed back and forth on the 
horns of the dilemma until he lands in the an- 
nihilation of utter skepticism toward both sides. 
If it were possible, one might leave him here in 
peace. But these questions as a rule only stay 
in the dark for a season, to return again ; while 
if they are dulled forever, the resulting calm 
is as irrational and as unjustified by logic as 
the wildest superstition. It is, indeed, the super- 
stition of unproved disbelief. 

We will count out of our audience, then, 
the religious enthusiast and the unbelieving 
enthusiast, who demand no reasons, and will 
consider the case of those who are still asking 
for proof of either position. In my experience, 
both sides are usually in a similarly weak situa- 
tion logically. The ordinary man is not compre- 
hensively logical, be he religious or otherwise ; 
most of us are subject to fallacy, and if our 
destiny depended on our ability to give an 
accurate statement of our views about it, a 
large majority of us would be in a sad case. 
But granting this human tendency to error, 
which side can give the most convincing argu- 
ment ? If neither side is convincing, what is 
the next thing to be done ? 



THE NECESSITY FOR A BELIEF 7 

The obvious answer seems to be, — i£ neither 
belief nor unbelief can support itself by proof, 
hold your judgment in suspense, and do not 
act in the matter until you get more light. 
This is our way of treating other rival theories. 
Two or more hypotheses may be stated in a 
text-book, and the student is advised not to 
commit himself absolutely to either. This is 
quite admissible in the case of theories of 
geological formation, of color vision, or of so- 
cial questions where one is not required to act 
on the matter immediately. But the peculiarity 
of religious beliefs is that they demand action 
at once, one way or the other. While you are 
waiting for further proof in this debate, either 
you are praying, or you are not ; you are accept- 
ing a responsibility to a Higher Being, or you 
are not ; you are teaching your children reli- 
gious truth, or you are not. In other words, 
the Law of Excluded Middle seems to hold as 
well in action as in thought, and however long 
a time you may take to make up your rational 
conclusions, your active life waits not for an 
answer, but is proceeding on one hypothesis 
or the other. It is, then, quite obvious that 
however the cautious thinker may hope to hold 
suspended judgment in his life of reason, his 



8 THE RIGHT TO BELIEVE 

life of action in the mean time is proceeding 
as if he beHeved one way or the other. 

Perhaps this last statement is not strictly 
true in life as we find it. The usual life of a 
man in this position is apt to be colored by 
both beliefs. At one moment he acts as if he 
believed, and is perhaps shamefaced, knowing 
that he cannot justify it; while again he re- 
stores the balance by actions proceeding from 
the opposite conviction. But this shifting of 
motive power is as illogical as any, and is a 
damper to any sort of vigorous output. The 
situation is like that of a child who cannot de- 
cide whether he wants to go walking with his 
father or with his mother, and runs back and 
forth from one to the other, until at last he falls 
to crying halfway between them. He may not 
really love his father better than his mother, 
but for the time being he must prefer one of 
them, if he wants to go walking ! Now we, as 
living human beings, are obliged "to go walk- 
ing " somewhere, and the question is whether 
it is not better to walk in a given direction 
with one opinion or the other, than to take 
our promenade between them, turning our 
back one moment on what we had embraced 
the moment previous. Granting, then, that we 



THE NECESSITY FOR A BELIEF 9 

want to commit ourselves to one or the other 
side entirely, and not halt between two opin- 
ions, which is the safer side to use as an act- 
ing hypothesis until we have proved our posi- 
tion ? It will take most of us some time to 
answer the difficulties on either side ; and since 
we must act in the mean time, which is more 
likely to give us satisfaction and least likely 
to get us into trouble ? " If the trumpet give 
an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself 
to battle ?'' A divided mind is a weariness, a 
hindrance to action, and at the same time it 
is wholly illogical. A single purpose is at least 
rational itself, and since we must take our 
chances on the result in either case, which is 
the safer road to travel ? 

I do not pretend, of course, that I have not 
a conviction toward one opinion or the other, 
but I am trying to answer this difficulty as an 
outsider, simply on the testimony of the dif- 
ferent people who have raised the question 
with me. Certainly the most obvious conclu- 
sion I draw from them is that religious belief 
is more satisfactory than religious unbelief to 
the person concerned. My interlocutors, if not 
always worried, were usually at least pensive 
about what they had ceased to believe, and 



10 THE RIGHT TO BELIEVE 

envied the situation o£ one who could believe 
and yet keep his countenance. Some of them 
had no regrets for what they did not believe, 
but were equally apathetic about their skep- 
ticism. In fact, the phrase I have used above, 
of "unbelieving enthusiast/' while logically 
correct, fits no person of my acquaintance. The 
nearest approach to enthusiasm in these unbe- 
lievers was a certain warmth in pointing out 
the weakness of the other side ; but in no case 
was their own situation described in glowing 
terms. On the other hand, I have never met 
any one with regrets over his beliefs. Since 
the religious situation of every thinking man 
varies with his training and the progress of 
his development, each man as a rule has varied 
shreds of belief clinging to him, even though 
in the main he is an unbeliever. Apparently 
these shreds do not worry him, but, on the 
contrary, give him a certain satisfaction, so 
that he is not trying to shake them off as he 
is his doubts. If religious belief is more satis- 
factory than unbelief, it has then one impor- 
tant fact in its favor as a working hypothesis. 
That religious faith, if acted upon, often 
leads to tremendous sacrifice and hardship, I 
do not deny. But I am not following all pos- 



THE NECESSITY FOR A BELIEF 11 

sible resultant actions to their end. Both be- 
lief and unbelief have had their martyrs, as 
any extremes may have them ; but that a cer- 
tian profound satisfaction and enthusiasm, 
even in misfortune, pervade the religious man, 
and are absent in the unbeliever, seems un- 
deniably true in all history. 

I have spoken of religious belief in a gen- 
eral way, as if it needed no definition ; but I 
must indicate a little more fully what we shall 
mean by the term. I do not mean all the pos- 
sible beliefs that one finds stated in orthodox 
creeds, as if they were of equal importance. 
Some standard church beliefs can apparently 
be shaken off with no feeling of loss to the 
doubter, while others seem most essential. It 
is these more important conceptions which give 
life and meaning to the whole, that I have in 
mind when I use the term " belief." I have 
arbitrarily selected what beliefs in my observa- 
tion cannot be lost without a wrench, and shall 
not consider those which have apparently 
caused no especial anxiety to my questioners. 
I mean then by Religion, a belief in the ex- 
istence of God, the authority of Christ as 
exponent of God's nature, the responsibility 
of man, the value of prayer, and the immor- 



12 THE RIGHT TO BELIEVE 

tality of the soul. Perhaps the inspiration of the 
Bible^ especially with regard to miracles, is a 
source of difficulty to all, although a lif e-and- 
death interest in this question is not so common. 
I think it is not a perverted optimism in even 
a religious person to consider a certain honest 
doubt a healthy sign in society. So long as 
a man vigorously doubts, he is alive, and in 
a much more hopeful state than a careless as- 
senter or a rigid unbeliever. Doubt at least 
implies a leaning of the mind in two directions; 
and while more illogical than a thoroughgoing 
belief in either side, it at least is better for 
life-purposes than complete unbelief. No one 
bothers to doubt the authorship of newspaper 
poetry, because no one cares who wrote it ; 
while the authorship of the Iliad, of Shake- 
speare's plays, and of the Fourth Gospel ex- 
cites endless discussion, because we care very 
much who wrote them. 

So it is with religious creeds. If society 
were willing to dismiss them to historians, and 
remark, " Oh yes, I dare say this is all true," 
it would be in a more serious state than when 
it finds them so important that honest criti- 
cism compels it to doubt them. In my opinion, 
there is no duty imposed on any man to accept 



THE NECESSITY FOR A BELIEF 13 

anything against which his reason rebels. The 
first virtue for thought is absolute honesty, 
and the cloaking of irrationality in virtuous 
garb is entirely uncalled for. Religious faith 
needs no crutch, and a rational man should 
accept it with his eyes and intellect open. He 
must demand proof in such cases as those in 
which he demands proof in the rest of his ra- 
tional life; he must not demand it where he 
does not demand it in his other rational life. 
To sum up our position as far as we have 
gone: granting that we have lost religious 
faith because of honest doubt and perhaps 
positive disbelief, we cannot go from one 
unproved position to another : we must prove 
our disbelief as well. In other words, we must 
be on the defensive and prove that there is no 
God, that Christ has no authority, that the 
soul is not immortal, and that man is not a 
free agent. Let there be no misunderstanding. 
Eventually, as rational beings, we must accept 
one position or the other. These religious 
statements are true or they are false. But in 
the mean time, we must doubt and criticise 
both sides impartially. We must hold both 
opinions as real possibilities, in order to dis- 
cuss them. Logically we are not yet ready to 



14 THE RIGHT TO BELIEVE 

make up our minds, but actively we are as if 
we had decided one way or the other. 

As a practical position, then, at the start, 
it would seem as if, since religion gives more 
satisfaction than the lack of it, since it lends 
more significance to life to conceive our ex- 
istence as immortal, and since there is at least 
an equal chance that a prayer to an Unseen 
Being is heard and meets with some kind of 
response, belief is the safer principle to adopt. 
A positive exercise of this sort can be dropped 
if we change our minds, but is not so easily 
learned by a mind unused to it. It is almost 
always easier to forget a technique than to 
acquire it; and since nothing in unbelief has 
been lost in the mean time (that is, no exer- 
cise the opposite of prayer, no action we must 
hasten to perform in case we are not to live 
eternally), surely nothing has been lost, and 
half a chance of something has been gained. 

I cannot see how a perfectly candid, logical 
soul could argue otherwise. The reason why 
we do not act on this simple basis of accept- 
ing for the time being the richer of two un- 
proved possibilities is that we are not so calmly 
rational as we think. The fear of being ridi- 
culous, a certain indolence, a timidity, a pride 



THE NECESSITY FOR A BELIEF 15 

in spiritual poor health, if not a sin of graver 
character, makes us rather, as before indi- 
cated, half -choose the possibilities on both 
sides, and, having exerted enough energy to 
think ourselves into trouble, decline to think 
ourselves out again. Since, as assumed at the 
outset, it was a rational difficulty that shook 
our faith, certainly this abandonment of rea- 
son is the most contradictory and vicious pro- 
ceeding. If we can leave logic alone, and 
emotionally accept the larger and more signi- 
ficant life with the rest of the world, well and 
good. If, on the other hand, we have chosen 
rigid thinking as our guide, let us stick to it, 
whichever way it leads us, acting in the mean 
time on the larger chance, as we would do in 
any less important matter, where there was 
everything to gain and nothing to lose. The 
third course, that of accepting a thorough un- 
belief, emotionally and enthusiastically, is pos- 
sible in theory, but you have not done it, or 
you would not be reading this. 



II 

DOES GOD EXIST? 

We have agreed on our first proposition, 
that a thinking man must believe in some- 
thingj since every statement must be true or 
false, and it remains for us to marshal our 
doubted beliefs, our faiths that have ceased to 
deserve the name, and investigate the grounds 
on which they rest. 

We will begin with the most fundamental 
question of all religions, — does God exist or 
does He not ? — because on its answer depends 
all that is to follow. If there is no God, eth- 
ical questions may still remain, but religion 
strictly speaking has ceased to exist, and re- 
ligious observance is a meaningless ceremony. 
We may approach this question directly or by 
a more roundabout road, and in such a dis- 
cussion as this, the latter is the more obvious 
way. That is, instead of considering first the 
proof of His existence, we will criticise the 
evidence usually advanced for His non-exist- 
ence, and later can judge on which side we 
have more convincing data. 



DOES GOD EXIST? 17 

We must place ourselves at the outset in a 
state of impartial doubt, that is, we must ad- 
mit the possibility that He is, or that He is not, 
or, in other words, doubt His non-existence as 
well as the opposite. 

The first reason usually given for disbelief 
in a God is, that we must accept the evidence 
of the senses, and since we do not see, feel, 
or hear God, why should we assume that 
there is one? It is an unwarrantable super- 
stition, with no experimental basis. A second 
reason is that the qualities that inhere in the 
concept of Godhead are so incomprehensible 
that the mind reels before them, and that any- 
thing which is so confessedly beyond being 
understood, becomes a meaningless string of 
phrases with no savor of reality. The moment 
God becomes a clearly explained credible being, 
there is no use for Him in the world. As in- 
comprehensible He does not exist, as compre- 
hended He is not a God ; hence the concept is 
a contradiction, and the economy of thought 
demands that we shall not introduce Him into 
a world that is more easily explained without 
Him. A third reason against belief in Him is 
that the characteristic of goodness is always 
attached to God, and since evil is so universal 



18 THE RIGHT TO BELIEVE 

in the world, no good being could have created 
it. 

It will be seen that only the first two types 
of objectors strike a direct blow at God's exist- 
ence. These disbelievers pin their faith to 
scientific proof, or to logical statement, and 
they therefore choose to accept only that which 
of its nature admits of experimental or log- 
ical handling. Since the Deity cannot be ex- 
pounded in this way, the question lies outside 
the pale of science, and what lies outside the 
range of science or of logic is untrue. 

These classes have valid enough reasons for 
objection, if they carry them to their conclu- 
sion, and will agree to disbelieve anything 
which does not admit of scientific proof or of 
logical definition. If, on the other hand, they 
do not demand the same grounds for belief in 
other accepted truths, they must not do so 
here. 

The third class denies the existence not of 
a God, but of a good God, because there is so 
much evil (and logically, I suppose, of a bad 
God because there is so much good) ; and 
since His character is assumed to be consist- 
ent if anything, and the world is not so, the 
existence of such a God and such a world is 



DOES GOD EXIST? 19 

found incompatible, and belief is dropped. If 
they could be shown either that the world is 
consistent one way or the other, or that God 
need not be consistent, they must abandon 
their position. 

Do we, then, make scientific proof and the 
evidence of the senses a basis for belief in 
other matters ? In many cases we undoubtedly 
do up to a certain point. The senses are the 
usual guides for our information, and we are 
not able to build up our most complex imagi- 
nations without sense symbols of some kind. 
Not only this, but we have become accustomed 
to give certain senses more credence than 
others. The eye has come to be accepted as our 
more reliable informant. The cavity which my 
tooth once filled feels large to my tongue and 
looks small to my eye, — therefore, which is 
it? Since we see more things to compare with 
it than we feel with our tongue, we arbitra- 
rily decide, small. I hear a voice but see no 
speaker, therefore I decide I did not hear it, 
but only thought I did. Thus the different 
senses are continually correcting one another, 
and vision, since it has developed with us a 
wider range and more acute discrimination, 
casts in most cases the final vote. If we lose 



20 THE RIGHT TO BELIEVE 

our vision, we shift our faith to hearing or 
touch, and if we lose all our avenues of sensa- 
tion-approach, what happens ? Certainly I do 
not cease to exist for my own consciousness 
because you cannot see, hear, or feel me, and 
because I am lost to yours. My non-existence 
to you because of your incapacity for sensa- 
tion proves nothing whatever about my exist- 
ence to other consciousness or to my own. So 
we might say, " Because you cannot see, hear, 
or feel God, nothing whatever is proved as to 
His being or non-being." The natural reply 
to this is, of course, that you are not alone in 
this anaesthesia, if we may so call it. All the 
world unites in not seeing or hearing Him ; 
and if no one has had this sensation, it is a 
world-experience, not an individual one, and 
as such we must accept it as true. 

Even here, however, the point is not proved. 
There are many things that we accept, and 
yet no one has ever seen them or ever will. 
Grant that the current proof of a stone's ex- 
istence is that we see and feel it, the reality 
of the law of gravitation, in which we equally 
believe, we neither see nor feel. You may in- 
spect the stone ever so carefully and you find 
no law, nor will you find one in the earth, 



DOES GOD EXIST? 21 

toward which it falls. That is, certain exist- 
ences are of their nature unapproachable by 
sensation, and far from disbelieving in them 
because of that, you make no demands that 
evidence of their reality shall be presented in 
such terms. The falling stone you see, the 
law governing its fall you never do, and yet 
you give one as hearty credence as the other, 
because the law of gravitation is the most 
orderly and satisfactory way of explaining the 
phenomena of falling bodies. 

If an existence is of its very nature unap- 
proachable by sensation, there is no point in 
demanding such a proof of its existence. Sup- 
pose, then, that it be admitted that abstract 
laws are beyond such experience, and the same 
is true of certain material substances, such as 
atoms or ether. Still, it might be contended 
that in the case of personality (which is the 
religious conception of God) we do demand 
the witness of sensation. We only believe in a 
person when we see him or believe him pos- 
sible of being seen by some one, and a person 
without some tangible evidence of his existence 
is the same as if he were not. Here we must 
go very carefully. As was suggested above, 
the situation is perhaps different in the case 



22 THE RIGHT TO BELIEVE 

of consciousness from what it is with material 
objects. Granting that to be real a being 
must exist somehow for some consciousness, 
it cannot be denied that a personality can 
exist for its own consciousness, even if others 
are blind to it; and no amount of disbelief 
by other minds can put it out of existence for 
itself. Thus logically we cannot deny the pos- 
sible existence of any number of invisible, in- 
tangible beings, of whom, because of the limi- 
tations of our sense-organs (which after all 
respond to a very small fraction of the vibra- 
tions in the material world), we are uncon- 
scious, and whom we customarily dismiss as 
unreal. This apparently opens the door to the 
wildest fancy, — to the possibility of not one 
God, but many, — and this real possibility is 
all I ask at this point. 

The doubter who has put unhesitating con- 
fidence in any personality that expresses itself 
to him through sensations, must admit the 
real logical possibility that a personality might 
exist appealing to no sensation of his what- 
ever, and yet exist just as really for itself. We 
can even go a step further. By no possibility 
would a scientific man believe in God any more 
than he does now, if there were an appeal to 



DOES GOD EXIST? 23 

every one of his senses. Suppose he saw a 
manifestation of some sort which called itself 
God, — if he alone saw it, he would call it an 
hallucination ; if all the world saw it, it would 
be classified as a visual phenomenon, more or 
less extraordinary as it was rarely or often 
seen. Men have always been hearing voices, 
which, however they might themselves con- 
sider them, have been labeled as nervous af- 
fections by the rest of the world ; and in one 
celebrated instance, where a voice was heard 
by several, the rest of the company declared 
it had but thunderedo 

In these cases I cannot see that any blame 
attaches to a non-believer. The lack of cre- 
dence given to a sensation-stimulus of possible 
divine origin proceeds from the tacit admis- 
sion, on the part of us all, that this is not the 
basis of approach to the kind of personality we 
conceive as God. Whatever may be His nature, 
which we shall try to define later, we agree 
more or less consciously on the idea that a 
Godlike personality not only does not depend 
on sensation as proof of His existence, but by 
no sensation-proof that we can think of would 
the scientific thinker be forced to believe in 
Him. I do not mean that it follows from the 



24 THE EIGHT TO BELIEVE 

foregoing that God could not make a sensation- 
approach of some kind^ but simply that such 
a sensation would prove nothing whatever as 
to its origin. 

Our first objector is in the situation of 
asserting^ " I will not believe in God if I 
cannot reach Him through sensation, and I 
will not believe in Him if I can reach Him 
through sensation ! " His existence has then 
ceased to be a real possibility, and the doubt 
is no longer an impartial one. 

We must therefore make a readjustment of 
our point of view. There is no sense surely in 
demanding a sensation-proof of God's exist- 
ence, if we would not believe in it if produced. 
If the question is to remain an open one, we 
must make some other demand, the fulfillment 
of which will be considered a sufficient ground 
for belief. A large amount of discussion goes 
on, in any department of knowledge, from 
the simple fact that the disputants do not 
know when they have finished. Since they 
have never distinctly formulated to themselves 
what must be proved to gain their point, and 
what counter-proofs mean their own discom- 
fiture, they go on and on, neither side discov- 
ering whether it has gained or lost. 



DOES GOD EXIST? 25 

We must try to avoid this human failing, 
by continually asking, " Is this question still 
an open one? Are both hypotheses really 
alive? '' If one hypothesis is not alive, that is, 
if we can conceive no possible system of evi- 
dence that would be accepted as proof of it, it 
is absolutely without point to discuss the ques- 
tion further. As we said at the beginning, we 
must doubt both hypotheses impartially, and if 
our position is such that we say, " By no pos- 
sible evidence could you prove your hypothe- 
sis — there is no conceivable testimony I would 
accept," we have put ourselves out of the game. 
This is entirely different from saying, " Such 
and such evidence I would accept, but I know 
you can never get it." This is a fair enough 
remark for any one to make. But the other 
position is equivalent to demanding a proof 
for something we have put outside the range 
of possible evidence, and as such it is not a 
fit subject for argument. We should then be 
in the class excluded from our audience, of 
irrational believers in unbelief. 

I am insisting rather strongly on this point, 
because it is where the argument with the first 
type of objector is likely to stop. He has de- 
manded a type of proof which he sees he does 



26 THE RIGHT TO BELIEVE 

not want, and being prepared with no other 
demand whose fulfillment will convince him, 
one must begjin over ao^ain on a more con- 
structive basis, showing him what he ought to 
accept as proof, and then producing the evi- 
dence if possible. 

Our second type of objector did not go so 
far as to demand sensation-testimony for God. 
He would be willmg to accept God as he ac- 
cepts an abstract law, if the formulation of 
the idea of God were clear enough to satisfy 
his reason. But he recognizes that logical 
statement can be only in known and defin- 
able terms; and since the conception of God 
is confessedly too great for complete under- 
standing, it is therefore outside the range of 
thought. Here we must have recourse to the 
Law of Excluded Middle again. A thing must 
either be or not be; and if both its being 
and its non-being are concepts too far beyond 
the range of experience for complete demon- 
stration and understanding, it still remains 
that one or the other must be true, whether 
we understand it or not. To illustrate this, it 
is only necessary to state some of the Kantian 
Antinomies, — that is, mutually contradictory 
theories, each one being as incapable of demon- 



DOES GOD EXIST? 27 

stration as the other^ and each^ I would add, as 
incapable of complete comprehension. For ex- 
ample, either the universe is limited in space 
or it is not. That is, either beyond the far- 
thest fixed star, and as far beyond as you like, 
there is a limit fixed to the bounds of the 
universe, or there is not. I cannot comprehend 
it as limited, for that implies nothingness be- 
yond the limits, and that I cannot conceive. 
Neither can I conceive it as extending infi- 
nitely without Hmits, Therefore both possi- 
bilities are inconceivable, and yet, since a 
thing must either be or not be, one or the 
other is true. The same situation holds with 
the question of divisibility of matter. Either 
it can be infinitely divided into smaller and 
smaller parts, or there comes a point where it 
cannot be divided further. Both possibilities 
are inconceivable, and yet one must be the final 
theoretical concept if we hold strictly to our 
law. 

In fact, without going so far afield, there 
are plenty of mathematical facts, such as the 
fourth dimension, square roots of certain quan- 
tities, etc., which are valid enough truths, but 
cannot be clearly conceived. 

All this shows that, logically, all thought 



28 THE RIGHT TO BELIEVE 

must proceed on certain unproved and incon- 
ceivable assumptions, and that the fact that 
they are unproved and inconceivable argues 
nothing whatever as to their truth or falsity. 
For all relative matters, that is, for all finite 
ideas that can be grouped under a larger con- 
cept, we demand clear definition and lucid 
comprehension. In any debate, for instance, 
the meaning of each term must be understood 
by both sides ; each term must be clearly de- 
fined in terms of something else. This is one 
of the first rules of logic : " A definition can- 
not contain the name of the word defined.'' 
Thus, the definition of a pen as ^^an instru- 
ment for the purpose of writing," or some 
similar phrase, is valid logically ; but the defi- 
nition of a pen as " a ^9^?2 for the purpose of 
writing," is no definition at all. We can define 
a pen accurately enough, for the very reason 
that it can be grouped under the larger con- 
cept of " instrument," ^^ article of wood, metal, 
or india-rubber," or what not ; and only be- 
cause of this possibility of statement in terms 
of something else, is it a valid object for log- 
ical definition. But when large concepts are 
pushed further and further back, we come 
finally to a point where the idea or the object 



DOES GOD EXIST? 29 

does not admit of statement in terms of any- 
thing else. It is what we call sici generis^ and 
such general concepts as Consciousness^ Mat- 
ter, and God belong to this class of indefin- 
ables. We see that they are indefinable solely 
because there is no higher class under which 
we may group them, and we cannot express 
their nature in other than their own terms ; 
but this does not bear the slightest reference 
to their truth or validity. If we try to define 
what we mean by human consciousness, how 
do we succeed? Consciousness is conscious- 
ness ; it is the sum of mental states ; it is the 
realm of mind, — and here we are using the 
same undefined terms in every definition, and 
making ourselves no clearer than before. Of 
course the reason that this does not bewilder 
us, as do the similar attempts at a definition of 
Godhead, is that we feel we all have an inti- 
mate firsthand consciousness of what conscious- 
ness is. The very act of doubting our mental 
life or attempting to define it is in itself a 
mental state ; and while the extraordinary in- 
conceivabiKty of our consciousness must have 
struck every thinking person, — the facts of 
memory, of imagination, the ceaseless stream 
of ideas that chase through our minds, con- 



30 THE RIGHT TO BELIEVE 

nected with our body and yet totally differ- 
ent in nature from their physical substratum, 
— in spite of all this, I say, we do not doubt 
the existence of consciousness, because we 
hai^e it. If a logical definition of it were pos- 
sible (but it is not, by the nature of the case), 
the real essence of mental states would be no 
more evident to us than it is already. All this 
latter argument, as with our first type of ob- 
jector, proves nothing whatever of a positive 
nature about the evidence of God. In both 
cases, we have simply shown that the argu- 
ments for God's non-existence are logically 
untenable. They have not been the arguments, 
as they supposed, on which the doubters base 
their beliefs in other matters of life-experience. 
In fact, contrary to their first conviction, they 
believe nothing so heartily as certain facts 
which from their nature can never be experi- 
enced by sensation, or logically defined. They 
admit further that sense-experience and logi- 
cal definition are by their very nature incapable 
of giving proof either of God's existence or of 
the reverse. 

We are now apparently in the identical 
position from which we started. Nothing is 
proved, and we are prepared as before to be- 



DOES GOD EXIST? 31 

lleve one hypothesis as easily as the other. 
Only two points have been gained : we shall 
not look to the senses for evidence o£ God's 
existence, and we shall not look in the field of 
pure logic to prove a proposition confessedly 
outside its realm. 

We say we are in our first situation, — but 
at first glance it seems even worse ! If we have 
put the conception of God outside the realm 
of sense and logic, have we not put it out of 
all possible range of thought ? The most com- 
plex and abstract theories of science must have 
an experimental basis of some kind, and if we 
have relegated the evidence of God's existence 
from both science and logical proof, what is 
there left but a realm of unreason where we 
refuse to tread ? 

I will agree at once that we have undoubt- 
edly put the question of God's existence out- 
side the range of any proof whatever. I will 
not say put it there, but found it there, as 
this has been no juggling with words, but the 
simple discovery of an eternal fact. 

The word " proof " belongs to science and 
logic. It means, either that enough data have 
been gathered, with similar effects following 
fixed precedents, to justify the scientist in 



32 THE RIGHT TO BELIEVE 

assuming a quantitative causal law connecting 
them. This is inductive proof. Or it means 
thatj granted certain logical premises, certain 
conclusions must follow. This is deductive 
proof. There are strictly none but these two 
kinds. Unless, then, we can formulate our 
subject-matter so that it falls into these modes 
of thinking, it is outside their range, and the 
word proof does not and cannot apply. 

Since we have said that the idea of God 
was too great to be defined in other terms, 
or brought under logical premises, and sensa- 
tion-evidence there was none, we are in this 
matter absolutely shut out from the close 
circle of scientific thought, and must proceed 
on a new basis. 

Moreover, instead of losing anything by the 
change of ground, we have infinitely gained. 
Since science cannot prove anything for us, 
neither can it disprove, and we no longer fear 
it. We are not afraid of any possible develop- 
ments of the evolutionary theory. We need 
not fear any disclosures in chemistry as to 
the spontaneous generation of matter, any 
researches in history that inform us that Abra- 
ham was a myth, or in geology, that the world- 
formation is not accurately described in Gene- 



DOES GOD EXIST? 33 

sis. We need not worry if astronomy leaves 
no tract for a material heaven^ or if psycho- 
logy refuses to speak of souls and shakes its 
head over immortality. As scientists we are 
profoundly interested in what science discloses, 
and look forward to years of as brilliant 
achievement and readjustments of theory as 
have gone before. But as religious thinkers 
we cannot use one of its discoveries to prove 
our beliefs, neither can it use any to disprove 
them. We are free. We are running on sep- 
arate tracks and cannot collide, and moreover 
we can build up our belief with no timid fears 
that the next scientific monthly may shatter 
the structure about our ears. At first this free- 
dom is not perhaps wholly welcome. Like a 
reluctant swimmer, who is for the first time 
set free from the trainer's hand, we are more 
conscious of our lack of support than of our 
liberty. If we cannot depend on ordinary 
means of conviction, what shall be our guide? 
But here our case is simpler than we fear. It 
is exactly by our ordinary means of conviction 
in certain instances, I believe, that we must 
become aware of God's existence; and these 
every-day means are not as universally scien- 
tific or logical as we imagine. I do not mean 



34 THE RIGHT TO BELIEVE 

by this that we are often irrational (although 
this is also true enough), but that there are 
many propositions which are as incapable of 
scientific proof as the one in hand ; we tacitly 
admit it, and act toward them on other grounds 
altogether. These unprovable propositions are, 
moreover, the most important in our whole 
experience. 

Take, for example, the very simple proposi- 
tion that our friends exist, that other person- 
alities are real, and live a mental life similar 
in kind to our own. Can this possibly be proved? 
We see, hear, and feel them, it is true, 
but the senses are very illusory after all, and 
there is no possible proof that they report an 
outward stimulus, rather than that they func- 
tion because of a stimulus in our own brains. 
When you talk with a friend, psychologically 
speaking, your own speech answers your own 
sound and sight sensations of him; yours are the 
motor impulses, and yours are the resulting 
sensations ; so that you could just as literally 
say you are holding a conversation with your- 
self. A certain brand of philosophy called 
Solipsism acknowledges itself driven to this 
point of view, and says we are all of us in a 
lonely world of our own, peopled with our own 



DOES GOD EXIST? 35 

sensations, which maybe nothing but hallucina- 
tions, in the sense that there is no possible way 
of proving that they arise from any stimulus 
outside of ourselves. We call a man insane 
when he addresses presences whom the rest of 
us cannot see ; but so far as any proof is con- 
cerned, we may be all of us in the same situation, 
with the simple difference that most of us seem 
to agree on certain hallucinations. I cannot 
know, then, that any but my own consciousness 
exists; but, nevertheless, I believe firmly that 
others do. Apparently my only reason for this 
is that I prefer to do so ! Since I cannot prove 
either one or the other, I choose the possibil- 
ity that gives a richer, more significant life. 
I do not want to be the only creature in the 
universe, — I can remember the horror of this 
possibility as it came over me sometimes in 
childhood; and though one might say, so long 
as these apparent existences are amusing and 
satisfactory in themselves, why mind whether 
they are separate personalities or tricks of your 
own fancy ? still, we feel a wide difference, and 
demand that their existence shall be a real one, 
and separate from ours. If you do not feel 
this difference, if you do not feel any shock to 
your life in thinking that your friends are simply 



36 THE RIGHT TO BELIEVE 

clusters of your own self -stimulated sensations, 
you are welcome to hold with the solipsists 
the other view. You have as good a right, so 
far as proof is concerned, and not a whit better, 
to believe your way as mine. As for me, I pre- 
fer the other road. Most of the world prefers the 
other road, too, and what is more, it has never 
occurred to them that there was any choice. 
They have felt that their friends' separate ex- 
istence was as assured a fact as their own per- 
sonality, and that nothing could be a truth 
less in need of proof. In one sense they are 
right. Their own existence and that of others 
are in similar case ; but instead of both being 
proved, both are alike unprovable ! 

If I turn my gaze inward to my own mental 
life, to discover just what I mean by ^^myself " at 
all, I shall find a tide of thoughts and sensa- 
tions flowing after one another in a ceaseless 
stream. At present, there is the fixed attention 
on what I am writing, the sound of rain, the 
feeling of warmth, the odor of varnish, and 
many other concomitant sensations ; but where 
in the meantime am I? These thoughts and 
sensations chase themselves along, sometimes 
under control of attention and sometimes not; 
and even if I call my attention the real 



DOES GOD EXIST? 37 

" I/' it apparently bears no special relation to 
what I was attending to yesterday. It seems 
in any case to go on in a certain sense of it- 
self — now shifting, now refusing to grasp 
anything, and now spurting off again. In vain 
do I try to separate myself from this torrent 
of ideas. If I call the whole conglomerate of 
my conscious states me^ then I am never the 
same person two minutes in succession ; if I call 
my memories me, then I am losing parts of my- 
self every instant ; my attention is not myself, 
for it will not be controlled ; and certainly my 
desire to control it cannot be the real I, as 
that implies that I am possessed by a mental 
factor stronger than myself, and that I do not 
myself know what I am attending to, but only 
that I want to attend. I do not know what or 
where the real I is situated in me, or in fact if 
there is one part of my consciousness more my- 
self than another. 

Why, then, do I believe that there is an I 
which stands for a more fixed soul in myself 
than I am able at any time to designate? Is 
anything in fact more impossible to prove than 
this? Are we not driven with the material- 
ists to say, "There is no Self. There is simply 
a tide of ideas aroused by fixed associational 



38 THE RIGHT TO BELIEVE 

and sensational laws, which flow on as rest- 
lessly and uncontrollably as a mountain brook. 
You do not govern your ideas, or exist as a 
Soul apart from them, and your being as a real 
ego is pure fiction. " We are not driven to 
this position, because the materialist is in like 
evil case with us. He cannot prove that an ego 
does not exist, that certain phases of conscious- 
ness are not more significant and rightfully 
called Soul than others, and we cannot prove 
the reverse. What, then, are we to do? We 
must choose the alternative that suits better 
with the rest of our thinking. He may keep 
his point of view, if he is so enamored of his 
habit of classifying organisms in the lower 
world that, for the sake of consistency, he would 
prefer to class himself with them and sacrifice 
the possibility of having a soul. That is, he 
would rather run the chance in that direction 
in the mean time, and keep his world-classifica- 
tions neat and simple. We, on the other hand, 
would rather take our chances the other way, 
and, at the expense of a uniform classifica- 
tion, say that perhaps man is an exception to 
the lower organisms, and that in spite of the 
inconsequent stream of ideas which make up 
the only ego he can discover, since he has gone 



DOES GOD EXIST? 39 

beyond the animals in thinhing he has a self, 
he may have gone beyond them and have one 
(always providing they are without souls, which 
we can also never prove). 

Indeed, our doubter will have no more dif- 
ficult task than the one of proving that he has 
or is a personality in any more real sense than 
is any of the lower animals ; and, on the other 
hand, the materialists cannot disprove the wide- 
spread conviction that man's higher activities 
of mind are expressions of a self that exists 
parallel with but apart from his animal nature. 
The two alternatives are of their nature out- 
side the region of proof. The most naive be- 
liever in his soul would hardly assign it a 
definite position in space, either inside or out- 
side of his body; and if he refuses to place it, 
how can it be located, either to be trium- 
phantly exploited by himself, or hunted for 
and found absent by his opponent ? 

The situation is this. We find a difference 
in quality between our ideas and certain 
thoughts and actions that we call more signi- 
ficant, more profound, more far-reaching than 
others; and we say, " I will call these my soul." 
The materialist observes these same differences, 
and says, " I will not call these or any other 



40 THE RIGHT TO BELIEVE 

ideas my soul." Both o£ us are arbitrary^ and 
doing equally what we choose. Whether we 
choose one way or the other depends largely 
on our temperament, that is, on whether the 
notion of being real personalities is very dear 
to us or not. We may have the desire to sim-^ 
plify the world at any cost, and make our point 
of view toward man's mentality coincide with 
that for other organisms. If we are of this 
mind, and the desire for personality is not a 
strong demand, we are cheerful materialists. 
If, on the other hand, our temperament clashes 
with our habits of scientific classification, we 
are melancholy materialists, or timid spiritual- 
ists, as the case may be. The rational course 
is to choose the richer alternative with our 
eyes open, and take the view which gives the 
widest possibility with the least sacrifice. In 
giving up materialism we sacrifice only a sim- 
plicity of outlook (which is indeed restful for 
the mind at times); but because so much simpler 
than the phenomena with which it deals, it is 
perhaps somewhat suspicious. By adopting the 
other view we gain a real dignity in human 
achievement, a meaning to right and wrong, 
and an incentive to duty, and we sacrifice no- 
thing, but only complicate our scientific theory. 



DOES GOD EXIST? 41 

Why, then, should we not be as free and 
happy as possible ? We have at least half a 
chance of being right. The vigor of our ac- 
ceptance of either theory will be proportionate, 
not to any force of logical conviction, of which 
there can be none, but to the force of our 
desire for the possibility we have chosen. 
If we r^iust have one alternative or the other 
to fit in with our other ideals, our acceptance 
will be a passionate one ; if we are indifferent 
to the outcome, our adherence will be luke- 
warm and will depend largely on the atmos- 
phere we are in at any given discussion of the 
matter. 

It is plain now where we are being led by 
our argument. Our acceptance of God's ex- 
istence depends, as does the belief in the real 
personalities of others and of ourself, on our 
desire to so believe where proof is impossible. 
If it were only a case of debate, we could call 
it " adoption, for the sake of argument, of an 
unproved premise." That is, while the argu- 
ment was in progress, we would agree to act 
as if the premise were true. But there is more 
than an argument in question here. On our 
decision depends the course of our whole life ; 
so, in the phraseology of Kant, our Practical 



42 THE RIGHT TO BELIEVE 

Reason must function in a region where Pure 
Reason ceases to have a place, or in the lan- 
guage of religion we must Uve by faith. 

In any case we must live by faith — there 
is no avoiding it. We live either by a faith 
that God does exist, or by an equally unproved 
faith that He does not ; but live by one faith 
or the other, we must. 

" Now faith is the substance of things hoped 
for, the evidence of things not seen," and the 
crux of the whole situation is, " What do we 
hope for ? " We can hope for the existence of 
a God, and thereby act as members of a uni- 
verse created by Him, or we can hope for a 
world without Him, and live as if not respon- 
sible to Him. It is because of these two alter- 
natives, I believe, that Paul in his famous 
chapter on love — ardent advocate of faith as 
he was — puts love above it, and above hope, 
as the primal necessity of life. Unless we have 
a real and vigorous longing for a God, a love 
for the idea of His existence, we shall not hope 
for Him, and unless we hope for Him there 
is no reason why we should believe in Him. 
We should otherwise naturally hope for an 
easy Godless world that makes no demands on 
us, and as naturally believe in one. 



DOES GOD EXIST? 43 

Then the important question for every 
doubter to ask himself is, " Do I really want 
a God?" If he honestly wants one, he may 
proceed with us to expound the character of 
the kind of God he wants, and to ask what 
kind of evidence of his existence he wants — 
since he does not want the evidence he de- 
manded at first. If he honestly does not want 
a God, he need go with us no further, as he 
is not of our audience. 

There is a curious tendency in one conscien- 
tious type of disbeliever to feel, that in this 
situation, where the choice lies between two 
faiths, it is more honest, more praiseworthy, 
to choose the thing feared, than to choose the 
thing hoped for. The doubter hopes for a 
God, but fears the other possibility, and con- 
siders it a taunt if accused of believing in a 
God simply because he wants to. What better 
reason could there be ? Surely nothing could 
be more uncalled for than to believe the op- 
posite unproved proposition, because he did 
not want to ! I hope I have indicated clearly 
enough that no scientific discovery could pos- 
sibly force him to choose the undesirable faith, 
and that if he thinks in so doing he is more 
scientific than in following his inclinations, 



44 THE RIGHT TO BELIEVE 

he Is mistaken. He is like a man so firmly de- 
termined to stand straight that he falls over 
backward. 

Is there then no possible factor outside of 
our hope that can indicate the road we are to 
travel ? Do the balances hang absolutely even 
between belief in God and belief in His non- 
existence^ with nothing but the added weight 
of desire on one side? 

Evidence of certain kinds we can find in 
both directions, but it must be judged as we 
judge evidence in other questions of the same 
character. We must take into consideration 
the reliability of the witnesses, and consider 
whether the intrinsic worth of few witnesses 
is of greater or less value than numbers of 
lesser ones. That is, we must decide whether 
quantitative or quahtative evidence is what we 
are after. 

In psychology there are no values put on 
different mental states. Psychology, like any 
science, must look upon its facts with an im- 
partial eye, and a sensation of a sweet taste 
or the resolve to die for one's country must be 
analyzed with equal scrutiny. Although one is 
more complicated than the other, they are 
both mere phenomena to be observed with 



DOES GOD EXIST? 45 

equal interest and attention. From this point 
of view, the prevalent idea that each human 
mind is a responsible being, and not a mere 
reflex mechanism like the lower animals, is 
only another idea along with the rest, to be 
noticed with interest as a mental character- 
istic of man, but it carries scientifically no 
weight whatever. That is, as a psychologist, 
a man refuses to be interested in the ultimate 
truth of this conviction of moral responsibility, 
but interests himself in it simply as a convic- 
tion^ along with many others. 

So the botanist, as a botanist, is not con- 
cerned with whether a rose is more beautiful 
than a weed. As an artist, he may have his 
convictions about it, but for the time being, 
all floral growth is his field, beautiful or ugly, 
and he refuses to enter into a discussion as to 
the relative beauty of his specimens. It does 
not interest him. 

But this difference between mental states 
does interest us. This, for the time, is just our 
field, and we choose to call some ideas more 
significant than others, and some men more 
valuable witnesses than others, because they 
share more largely in these ideas. 

If we try to define what we call ourself^ in 



46 THE RIGHT TO BELIEVE 

each case we shall doubtless specify certain 
factors in our mental make-up which we con- 
sider more significant. We perform more ha- 
bitual automatic acts than we make great 
decisions, the proportion is in point of quan- 
tity overwhelmingly in their favor, and yet 
we feel ourselves as personalities in the latter 
situations, however few they may be, much 
more than in the former. Nathan Hale, for 
instance, had lived twenty years or so of eat- 
ing and drinking, walking, breathing, and con- 
versation. He died once for his country, and 
yet that one experience, that one choice, seems 
to us all, and undoubtedly seemed to him, 
more like himself speaking, like his real ego 
experiencing itself, than did the thousand and 
one lesser matters of his life. 

Now it is undeniably true that, just as 
there is a widespread conviction that the hu- 
man race has a life of real moral responsibil- 
ity, that is, is a race of personalities and not 
mechanisms, so there is and has been for many 
centuries a conviction that there is a God. 
Moreover, it is true that the periods in which 
men have become most certain of their own 
personalities as moral and responsible beings, 
in which they have viewed their fellow men 



DOES GOD EXIST? 47 

most as persons and not as things — these 
have been the times when God's existence has 
seemed most probable. I use the terms man as 
a personality and man as a moral being inter- 
changeably, because the two imply each other. 
If I am not a person, I am not responsible for 
what I do ; if I am a person, I can be called to 
account for my actions. It is the moral world 
which drives home the question whether we 
are persons or not. When we are at work, 
taking physical exercise, or engaged in aesthetic 
enjoyment, the question of personality does 
not arise, and if no moral questions had crossed 
our path, it might never have arisen. But 
when confronted with a duty, the whole course 
of activity depends on the question, " Am I a 
responsible being or am I not ? " and then we 
are driven back to ask our self (if we have a 
self) the question. 

In point of numbers, then, our innumerable 
actions of a reflex and mechanical order seem 
to ally us with the lower orders of beings, and 
make us non-personal, natural automatons. In 
point of significance, however, our moments 
of choice between important alternatives, our 
moments of self-sacrifice, or of creative thought, 
seem, in spite of their scarcity, to indicate the 



48 THE RIGHT TO BELIEVE 

existence of a real self ^ which^ dormant though 
it may often be^ occasionally rouses itself to 
action, and we choose to call those actions 
more truly ours than the more frequent and 
trivial ones. We judge our friends' personal- 
ities on the same basis, and consider certain 
traits more important, more their real self, 
than others. 

Now why do we not apply the same princi- 
ples naturally and without hesitation to the be- 
lief in God's existence ? The world has always 
had the idea of a God, and believed in Him 
with more or less intensity. We cannot prove 
that such a universal conviction points to an 
external existence, any more than that our sen- 
sations do the same. But if we can make any 
distinction between the value of our different 
mental states, the moments when we feel most 
convinced of God's existence seem always of a 
higher order than those when we deny Him ; 
and if we want Him sufficiently^ it will no 
more occur to us to refuse to communicate 
with Him on an unproved probability, than to 
cut off intercourse with human beings because 
it is unproved that they exist. 

The most ardent solipsist states his views to 
the audience whose existence he calls in ques- 



DOES GOD EXIST? 49 

tion, and if the doubter in a similar manner 
kept up a continual communication with a God 
whose existence he half believed, the practical 
situation would be the normal, natural one. The 
philosopher may ask with good reason, " Do 
these sense-stimulations indicate an external 
reality, or am I alone in my world of self-stimu- 
lated ideas?" But in the mean time, until he 
settles the matter, or indeed no matter how he 
settles it, he does talk to his friends, he acts 
as a good parent and citizen, and his friends 
look upon his doubts with a cheerful indiffer- 
ence. They do not care what he thinks, so long 
as he acts as if he thought they and he were 
human beings in the same world. 

Let it not be understood that we are putting 
the slightest undervaluation on the necessity 
of rigidly scientific thought. We simply insist 
that where logic and science cannot touch the 
problem, we can only call the man sane who 
acts on the richer possibility. 

If our solipsist acted on his fears instead of 
his hopes, if he ignored his fellow beings be- 
cause he was not convinced that they existed 
outside of his imagination, we should call him 
eccentric, not to say mad. Or if a scientist 
doubted his own personality, and, giving up 



50 THE RIGHT TO BELIEVE 

what he considered a meaningless struggle to- 
ward certain ends, relapsed to a natural ani- 
mal life, it would be necessary to shut him up. 
His neighbor would have the right to say, 
" Doubt what you like, but you must act as if 
you were a person and as if I were." 

Now our doubters are in the situation of 
men who, having a defensible doubt, act on the 
lesser possibility, when it is a question of God's 
existence, while they very rationally act on 
the larger chance toward themselves and their 
friends. On the arising of doubt (and doubt 
is a healthy period of mental development) 
they cut off communication with God, if they 
ever had any, and the longer they are out of 
connection the more unreal He becomes. They 
commit themselves without reserve to the other 
point of view, forgetting that it is equally un- 
founded. 

Suppose I follow a similar method with my 
friends. I begin by refusing to speak; I pass 
them without recognition. Every argument 
that might point to their reality I label as un- 
sound, because it is prompted mainly by my 
hope and desire to escape from loneliness. 
What would be the result of this ? Would it 
take many weeks for the conviction to deepen 



DOES GOD EXIST? 51 

that they were actually unreal, for their voices 
to come like meaningless dreams which I would 
never answer ? They in turn would leave me 
more or less sadly alone, and not trouble the 
solitude with which I had chosen to surround 
myself. What I saw of them would pass like a 
panorama before my eye, hardly distinguished 
from my imagination, which would have been 
growing more and more vivid, thrown back, as 
it were, upon itself. This would be a kind of 
anti-social mania, thoroughly unhealthy and 
untenable, and yet just as well founded on logic 
as the normal human attitude, and the exact 
situation in which the doubter of God's reality 
finds himself. 

The best men throughout the ages have 
been convinced that there was a God, or have 
been profoundly unhappy because they were 
not so convinced. The best moments of our 
life are when we consider His existence the 
most probable, and we have the witness of the 
high moments of others as well as of ourselves. 
We have the testimony of many men, on the 
other hand, that they have had no such God- 
experience, and we have had our own moments 
of certainty that God is an impossible concep- 
tion. In numbers it may be that the latter 



52 THE RIGHT TO BELIEVE 

moments have been most frequent ; in quality, 
which are of the higher order? In quality, tak- 
ing the broadest view possible, which has been 
the higher type of man? There have been 
many noble men who disbelieved in God, but 
they seldom recommended their position or 
sought to make converts. Their own attitude 
to their convictions is a sufficient criticism. 
Further, on general principles a positive witness 
is worth more than a negative. If a sufficient 
number of healthy normal men assert, " I have 
seen," " I have felt," their evidence is worth 
more than that of the same number of normal, 
but withal dissatisfied men who say, " I have 
not felt," " I do not know." 

If one says, " I am convinced that God ex- 
ists ; I speak with Him daily ; certain states of 
mind seem like responses from another person- 
ality, and not like my own untouched conscious- 
ness," who can contradict him, provided his 
normality in other directions gives him a right 
to be an accredited witness to anything? If 
another man says, ^^I do not have any belief 
in God's existence, I never speak with Him, 
or He to me," it is a confession that he has 
put himself out of the range of a God-influ- 
ence as much as possible. He could not be ex- 



DOES GOD EXIST? 53 

pected to know it if there were a God, any 
more than he would have an acquaintance 
with any one whose existence he did his best 
to ignore. 

Are we, then, to open the door wide to any 
beliefs that the world wants? Are supersti- 
tions and fancies, ghosts and goblins, to be 
admitted to supply chance demands, since no 
one can touch them with proofs ? If a child 
has convinced herself by constant conversation 
with her doll that it has a soul, is she justified 
in her standpoint ? 

We must of course use common sense, but 
the danger is not half so great of our being 
foolish, as of our being timid. Why not say 
unhesitatingly, " Of any two unprovable alter- 
natives in regard to the existence or nature of 
a possible fact, that alternative is most ration- 
ally believed which satisfies the highest demand 
of the highest type of normal human beings ; 
and, being accepted, only that life is rational 
which lives absolutely as if that alternative 
were true"? We need not be afraid of the 
demands of the human race. As a whole they 
do not want to believe in hobgoblins, and 
never will. There have been higher orders 
of mind in every generation, who demanded, 



54 THE RIGHT TO BELIEVE 

and taught others to demand^ the same type 
of God we want to-day. We need not fear that 
we shall be forced by numbers to an irrational 
contradictory belief. There have always been 
seven thousand who have preferred not to bow 
the knee to Baal^ and there is a certain amount 
of conceit in the scientific mind which is afraid 
to commit itself to any belief that exemplifies 
a world-hope. Man as a whole is to be trusted. 
As a trained mind, he goes as far as science 
will take him ; then he chafes at the limits of 
a scientific habit of thought that confesses it- 
seK unable to decide ultimate alternatives. 
One or the other ultimate is true. Can he not 
trust his hopes ? What better reason has he 
to trust his fears ? If a man is just, can he not 
be trusted to live by his larger faith, and not 
by a foolish or fragmentary one ? If the body 
of just men as a whole has united in one 
great hope, that of itself puts it beyond the 
range of the foolish or the irrational. The 
world as a whole knows what it wants. 




Ill 

THE NATURE OF GOD AND OF MAN 

So far we have been discussing the question 
of God's existence, without once asking the 
very natural questions, " What do we mean by 
God? What means have we of knowing what 
kind of a personality He is, granting that He 
exists at all?" 

At least we have got started on our road, 
if we remember the conclusion of the last dis- 
cussion, namely, that we have a right — other 
things being equal — to believe what we liope. 
We must begin, then, by carefully deciding 
what we hope, — that idea must be very clear, 
before we can go further, — and then we will 
decide whether other things are equal. Do we 
have at least enough of possible evidence on 
our side to justify our indulging in a hearty 
and satisfying belief in what we wish should 
be true? 

In a certain sense all of us do know what 
we mean by God. We know well enough what 
we have meant by the word, to make the dis- 



56 THE RIGHT TO BELIEVE 

cussion possible up to this point without any- 
further definition. But now we must become 
more exphcit. Our third type of objector, the 
man who desired a good God, but was unable 
to believe in Him because of a bad world, has 
received but little attention so far, because his 
doubts were founded more on God's nature 
than on His existence. Was he right? Are 
we forced to believe in a bad God if any, or 
is that a contradiction ? And what shall be 
our basis of decision: the outside world, or 
our own minds ; the good in the world, or its 
evil ? Is there any conception large enough to 
include them all ? 

We will begin, however, in the simplest 
possible way. Whether we can have it or not, 
whether the evidence is for or against, we will 
ask, ^^What do we want?" That seemed a 
reliable guide in the previous discussion, and 
perhaps it will be so again. The attributes 
that the world has apparently wanted to ascribe 
to its God have been power, grandeur, and an 
interest in man and his affairs, which implies 
a consciousness of a somewhat similar nature 
to man's, although of a higher order. This 
higher order consists in a wider span of know- 
ledge than is given to the human mind, and a 



THE NATURE OF GOD AND OF MAN 57 

supreme capacity for bringing about its own 
wide-reaching plans. I suppose all religions 
have agreed on so much in the nature of God, 
whether they called Him an evil spirit or a 
good one, whether they considered that His 
interest in man consisted merely of vengeance 
on His actions, or of sympathy with His con- 
cerns. But if we are to make any distinctions 
between our witnesses, certainly the higher 
orders of men and of religions have given fur- 
ther attributes to God's nature. He was not 
only a majestic and powerful person, but His 
interest in man was of a noble character. It 
consisted not only of an abstract observation 
of the creatures He had made, but of a devo- 
tion to them as much greater than human love 
as God was greater than man in other respects. 
They have given no spatial character to God's 
person. One cannot say that He is here or 
there, that He has a body like ours, or indeed 
has any material dimensions whatever. But 
just as we have accepted the mystery of our 
own personality, and, while vaguely calling it 
connected somehow with our body, can find 
no resting-place for a soul from our heads to 
our feet, so they have accepted the difficult 
concept of a spirit without a body, as being 



58 THE RIGHT TO BELIEVE 

at least no harder to conceive than a spmt 
with a body, and they have called God such 
a person. This conception o£ God has always 
aroused certain criticisms. In the old Greek 
philosophy, Xenophanes remarked, " So would 
an ox conceive of God as a greater ox, and a 
lion conceive of him as a greater lion " ; and 
such critics call this idea of God anthropo- 
morphic, that is, just an inflation of man's 
character to as large a size as possible, and 
then a naming of the result, God. 

It never pays, however, to be fearful. If 
this is actually the best thing we can do, if 
only by personifying the noblest characteris- 
tics that we know anything about (namely, the 
most highly developed mental, moral, and spir- 
itual life of man), can we get any clear idea of 
a Deity, then we must not be afraid of being 
called anthropomorphic, or of being labeled 
in any other possible fashion. 

Suppose we try to do anything else. If we 
say, " God is too great to be like man in any 
respect. PersonaUty means limitation, which 
He cannot have; He cannot have what we 
call knowledge, for that is made up of ideas 
and sensations dependent on brain states, which 
He does not possess; He cannot have emo- 



THE NATURE OF GOD AND OF MAN 59 

tlons, for they are bodily affairs as well ; He 
cannot bring certain effects about^ for cause 
and effect are separated by time, but God 
lives in a timeless universe where these have 
no meaning." In our anxiety to do the con- 
cept of God full justice, therefore, we formu- 
late a series of attributes more and more ab- 
stract and shadowy, until it is equivalent to 
saying, '' God's nature must be such that man 
cannot really form the remotest conception of 
what He is like"; and we fall into a pitfall 
much more dangerous than anthropomorphism, 
for it seems to remove God absolutely out of 
reach. 

That there is a certain justification for such 
a process of skeptical criticism, we must admit. 
Certainly in our experience of men, sensations, 
emotions, reasoning, and all the rest of our 
mental or spiritual life are apparently always 
in connection with brain states, and personal- 
ity gains its significant quality always by cer- 
tain limitations. I mean by this, that you are 
you because you are certain things, and are 
not certain others. You have a sense of hu- 
mor, you are musical, you do not enjoy danc- 
ing, you do not like chemistry, you have blue 
eyes, you are not six feet tall, you are an 



60 THE RIGHT TO BELIEVE 

American, you are not a Swede. Thus the 
sum total of the things you are not, do not, 
and have not, as well as what you are, do, and 
have, makes up what we call you, and is your 
personality for the rest of society. Supposing 
now that you had no limitations, that you 
were all things, knew all things, were beyond 
all limits of bodily shape, or of nervous mani- 
festations, in sensation, emotion, will, — would 
there then be any personality whatever ? More- 
over, since our whole mental life depends so 
absolutely on brain and nervous states, how 
can any consciousness in any way akin to our 
own be conceivable without a kindred body ? 
As to the latter consideration, which we see is 
the same as the question, ^^Can we ourselves 
be immortal?" the state of the case is this: 
it is true that mental life and bodily existence 
appear always together in our experience, but 
it is also true that the link between the mind 
and the body is exactly as much of a mystery 
as the possibility of a mind's existence with- 
out a body. 

I hope it will not seem as if we were sys- 
tematically trying to befuddle ourselves, and 
make puzzles and problems out of what had 
before seemed simple matters enough. Our 



THE NATURE OF GOD AND OF MAN 61 

only Insistence is upon an impartiality in 
mysteries. If we can take the possibility of 
God's consciousness without a body as simply 
and naturally as we accept our own with one, 
well and good. No further discussion is neces- 
sary. But if we begin to call one inconceivable 
and the other easily understood, we are one- 
sided in our view. From one point of view, 
both are commonplace, and from another both 
are profoundly beyond comprehension. It is a 
commonplace that when I look at an English 
violet I get a purple light-sensation and a deli- 
cately fragrant odor. No one would question 
it, and on the other hand no one can explain 
it. Let no respectful layman think that a psy- 
chologist can explain it, for he is absolutely 
unable so to do. We can trace the light-waves 
into the eye, we can imagine the resulting 
chemical disturbance in the retinal coat at the 
back of the eye, we can fancy an observer 
with the most refined instruments following 
the nervous current along the optic nerve, 
until it makes connection with cells in the vis- 
ual tract of the brain, and measuring the ner- 
vous discharge there and in the smell-region 
of the brain, where cells have been excited at 
the same time. All this your psychologist can 



62 THE RIGHT TO BELIEVE 

conceivably watch ; but could he see the purple 
sensation you have been experiencing, could 
he smell the same fragrant odor that you smell 
as the cells in your brain become active? He 
most certainly could not. The moment con- 
sciousness of sensations is aroused in you, you 
have them and you alone. Yoii do not have 
the experience as nerve-currents, or as dis- 
charge of cells in your brain. Your experience 
is purpleness and fragrance, v^hich, hunt as 
he may in your brain, no observer from the 
outside can discover; and what possible con- 
nection there is between cell-discharge in the 
back of your brain and color-experience, cell- 
discharge at the side of your brain and odors, 
who of us can say? If we approached this 
phenomenon from the outside, we should 
doubtless say, " Impossible, inconceivable ! 
There can be no connection between sensa- 
tion, emotion, reasoning, and a pound or so 
of gray tissue which decomposes and rebuilds 
again like muscles or even vegetables. It is 
quite out of the question that the peculiar 
existences we call ideas should be linked with 
such a disagreeable mass of gray matter." 
We seem forced to admit, nevertheless, that 
there is such a connection, although, if one 



THE NATURE OF GOD AND OF MAN 63 

really faces the issue and understands the 
problem, this seems as incomprehensible as is 
a consciousness freed from connection with a 
brain which apparently hinders it full as much 
as it helps it. 

But some one will naturally object to this : 
" Don't give us any more mysteries than we 
are obliged to have. We grant that an em- 
bodied spirit is as difficult to explain as a dis- 
embodied one, but we are forced to accept the 
former. The tyranny of experience demands 
that we stretch our intelligence to include the 
first ; but since we are not obliged to include 
the latter in our science, let us be thankful 
that we have one problem less to wrestle with." 

This is, I think, the usual attitude of the 
unbelieving but thoughtful scientific man. He 
has faced both problems squarely enough to 
see that they are equally difficult; but a cer- 
tain economy of attention leads him to fasten 
on the questions that he feels must be answered 
for a thorough scientific explanation of the 
world, and he leaves the others as not having 
enough forced prominence in experience to de- 
mand attention if he does not choose to give 
it. He cannot escape having mental life with 
certain features prominent in it, and he can- 



64 THE RIGHT TO BELIEVE 

not fail to notice that he has a body. There- 
fore, the connection between the two is an 
obvious question, and demands attention. He 
also cannot fail to notice that a large fraction 
of the world has a belief in a God, but he does 
not observe that he has any such belief him- 
self. Perhaps he remembers that at one time 
he had certain unusual feelings that might have 
arisen from contact with a Divinity if there 
were one, but he does not have them now, 
neither does he want them. He finds it sim- 
pler, in a world with so many questions wait- 
ing for solution, to sweep them all carefully 
up, before allowing any more to blow in ; and 
since what experience he may have had of a 
God does not interest him, he shuts the doors 
to any possible recurrence of it. In other 
words, he does not hope for a God, therefore 
he does not try to put himself in a position 
for contact with Him. Since he has no contact 
with Him, naturally God plays no part in his 
experience, and naturally again, since this is 
the case, the problem of His existence is more 
easily set aside as inconceivable, than is the 
problem of his own mind and body, which is 
a part of his experience, and for which, more- 
over, he has a certain fondness. 



THE NATURE OF GOD AND OF MAN 65 

If previously a God-experience had become 
as much a part of his hf e as red color-sensa- 
tions, or if the habit of speech with Him were 
as ingrained as speech with his other friends, 
the problem of disembodied consciousness 
would, it is true, not be simpler, but at least 
it would demand an acceptance as a tyrannous 
fact of experience, however inconceivable it 
might be. The religious men of all times have 
been in just this position. They have not al- 
ways been unscientific men ; indeed, they have 
accepted the facts of their religious life as de- 
manding the belief in a God, just as a scien- 
tific man accepts certain phenomena when he 
is obliged to, however difficult they are to 
comprehend. The religious man says, " I have 
certain sensations and emotions when physically 
stimulated, so evidently my mind and my 
body have connection. I don't know what that 
connection is. I have also a consciousness at 
times of God's presence. I have an affection 
for Him. I feel that certain things are possi- 
ble only if He exists. I am never conscious of 
Him as a body. I cannot believe that He has 
one, or how could I come in contact with Him 
as I know I do ? Therefore I believe that God 
exists without a body, although I don't know 



66 THE RIGHT TO BELIEVE 

how.'' The unbeliever starts with the same 
reasoning as the religious man^ but continues 
in another fashion. " I do not understand the 
connection between mind and body, it is true, 
but I am forced to believe that there is one; 
I am not forced by any fact in my experience 
to believe there is a God, since I do not feel 
Him ; and because minds and bodies have al- 
ways come together in my experience, I shall 
assume that they always do, until I have rea- 
son to think something else. That minds might 
exist without bodies, as do bodies without 
minds, is theoretically possible, but practically 
no data force me to admit the probability." 

And so we might conceive an interested 
mind without a body joining the controversy 
and saying, with a wag of his head, " It is 
difficult to conceive how I am existing with no 
material limits, but it is evident that I do, so 
I must accept the facts. I am informed that 
certain minds consider themselves attached to 
a mass of gray substance in a bony and fleshy 
structure. They say that, whenever the gray 
substance is excited, they are ; and paradox- 
ically enough, if it is too much excited, they 
sometimes cease to exist altogether for certain 
periods, or conduct themselves oddly. There 



THE NATURE OF GOD AND OF MAN 67 

may be something in it, but any possible con- 
nection between a mind and any such sub- 
stance is so difficult to comprehend, that I am 
inclined to doubt the validity of their convic- 
tion." If this mind were interested in us, if he 
wanted to make our acquaintance, he would 
look us up a little further. If he was contented 
with his universe as it was, he would natu- 
rally dismiss us from his attention altogether. 
Such a dismissal would not, however, affect the 
question of our existence in the least. 

We then, who hope for a God, need not be 
deterred from a belief in Him because of too 
great a difficulty in the conception of a mind 
without bodily limitations. Must we also be- 
lieve Him above all mental and spiritual limi- 
tations? And if we so believe, are we not 
sacrificing all meaning in personality ? Is there 
any formulation of God's nature possible, 
which shall be comprehensible enough to be 
real, and yet great enough to be more than 
man, — that is, great enough to be real Di- 
vinity? It is almost a paradoxical situation. An 
absolutely ununderstandable God could be no 
part of our experience, and a God who could 
be thoroughly apprehended would have be- 
come a finite thing and no God at all. But we 



68 THE RIGHT TO BELIEVE 

have discovered paradoxes everywhere^ and 
have found that they are not made an excuse 
for disbelief by those who hope for any issue* 

If we are to have what we hope for, what 
do we want our God to be ? What would be 
possible evidence of such a nature ? Is there 
such evidence ? These are our first questions, 
and to answer them adequately would require 
a spiritual and poetic imagination to which I 
lay no claim. I shall simply try to define 
what most ordinary men and women want 
when they desire or have become possessed of 
some religious life. 

Which demand shall have expression first 
depends largely on the individual. It would 
be a natural consequence of his previous ex- 
perience whether he asked first for comfort, 
relief from loneliness, stimulation for better 
living, or optimistic courage for the future. 
Since we, however, have started our inquiries, 
spurred on by intellectual doubt, our first ques- 
tion must be an intellectual one, our first de- 
mand will be for a rationalizing of our uni- 
verse. This, in point of fact, is the question 
we hear asked on all sides : " What is it all 
about? Why are we here going through cer- 
tain motions in an unsatisfactory world? Grant- 



THE NATURE OF GOD AND OF MAN 69 

ing that there is a God, what possible reason 
could He have had in setting the universe 
whirling through its endless and apparently 
meaningless cycles?" For such questioners, 
it is absolutely essential that God, whatever 
else He may or may not do, should express Him- 
self rationally. His nature and man's must have 
this in common, that both are governed by 
motive, by meaning, by a certain high sense. 
Only that character can have dignity which 
carries out some kind o£ motive, and we would 
rather believe the reason for our existence to 
be almost anything, than believe it to be with- 
out reason at all. A God with no reason, with 
no motive whatever in His creations, would be 
more difficult of comprehension than any other 
God, or no God ; and certainly rather than ac- 
cept such a God (for we would never hope for 
Him), we should believe that He did not exist. 
Clashing with this demand are two other 
classic attributes which have been given to 
God-head for many generations. These are the 
characteristics of omniscience and omnipotence. 
These are ascribed to God, not so much be- 
cause we hope for them, perhaps, as because 
we feel that they are necessary characteristics 
of a suitable Divinity. The questioner says 



70 THE RIGHT TO BELIEVE 

rather wearily, ^^ I suppose God has got to know 
everything, past, present, and future, because 
He made it ; and if He knows everything that 
is coming afterwards, what possible point can 
there be in watching it roll itself interminably 
out?'' This is the depressing atmosphere of 
fatalism, of predestination, of a complete fore- 
ordination, — an atmosphere which we breathe 
only because we conscientiously feel we ought. 
We feel we must go in for a complete God, 
if any. If He knows anything. He must of 
course know everything; if He made anything. 
He made it all ; and for some inexplicable rea- 
son He derives a satisfaction from watching 
His plans work out to their inevitable conclu- 
sion. 

With Earth's first clay He did the last man knead, 
And there of the last Harvest sowed the Seed : 
And the first Morning of Creation wrote 
What the last Dawn of Reckoning shall read. 

Yesterday this Day's Madness did prepare ; 
To-morrow's Silence, Triumph, or Despair ; 
Drink ! for you know not whence you came, nor why ; 
Drink ! for you know not why you go, nor where. 

The natural outcome of this view of an 
omnipotent God is a total loss of responsi- 
bility on the part of man. A God who can do 



THE NATURE OF GOD AND OF MAN 71 

everything He wills^ and who willed my actions 
down to my latest mistake, has got what He 
wanted. He surely cannot hold me to account 
for what I have done, since I could not oppose 
Him i£ I would. 

But helpless pieces of the game He plays 
Upon this checquer-board of Nights and Days ; 
Hither and thither moves, and checks, and slays, 
And one by one back in the Closet lays. 

The Ball no question makes of Ayes or Noes, 
But here or there, as strikes the Player, goes, 
And He that tossed you down into the field. 
He knows about it all, He knows. He knows ! 

What ! from His helpless Creature be repaid 
Pure Gold for what He lent him dross allayed ! 
Sue for a debt he never did contract. 
And cannot answer — Oh the sorry trade ! 

It would seem, then, that the ascription of 
omnipotence and omniscience to our idea of 
God's existence is not exactly what we would 
choose if left to ourselves. If our first demand 
for motive in the creation of the world and of 
us is to be satisfied, the second demand for 
all-power and all-knowledge would have to be 
curtailed. An omnipotence that is able to 
make puppets of men, and that made the evil 
as well as the good ; an omniscience that knows 



72 THE EIGHT TO BELIEVE 

to its minutest detail every future event^ be- 
comes at once to our understanding devoid of 
motive. What conceivable reason for watch- 
ing the play ? 

It might be that God could do anything, 
but does not choose to; that human beings 
might have been created with only the auto- 
matic reactions of the lower animals, but have 
been allowed to exercise their own will, which 
God respects. This voluntary abridgment of 
His own power would make omnipotence a 
rational possibility, — otherwise not. 

Since we are embarked on a voyage of 
freedom, and have thereby lost all the advan- 
tages of authority and tradition, let us at least 
not embrace their disadvantages. If we do 
not want a God whose hand creates every- 
thing, even our own actions, and if an entire 
knowledge of future development seems to 
deprive creation of motive and makes us ask, 
" Why such a long time about a world in which 
novelty is impossible ? " — if we do not want 
all this, let us by all means not have it. Let 
us not feel obliged to say All-Creator, AU- 
Knower, if such ascriptions do not arise from 
a profound desire of our soul. We would 
choose that God should have had a real reason 



THE NATURE OF GOD AND OF MAN 73 

for the creation of the universe^ a reason that 
somehow includes us. We would choose that 
His personality should not only respect ours 
and allow it to make real choices, but that it 
should love us and help us to make them. 
His power would then not be the absolute 
control of an inventor over his machines, but 
the influence of a stronger personality over 
weaker ones, an influence which has its limits, 
and which could be ignored if the weaker per- 
son chose to ignore the greater. We clutch, 
somehow, at the right to disbelieve in God if 
we choose. We have a childish satisfaction 
which is nevertheless a real one, in believing 
that even a God cannot make us have faith 
where we will not, and that, whereas God in 
His infinite sympathy will not overlook us, we 
can if we choose overlook Him. The possi- 
bility of disbelief must be as real as that of 
belief, and whether it abridges God's power 
or not, we insist on this freedom. We choose, 
moreover, that some kind of communication 
be possible between God and ourselves, that 
His presence may be invoked by some kind of 
exercise on our part. He is not omnipresent 
in the sense that He is always communing 
with us, or that we can always evoke the same 



74 THE RIGHT TO BELIEVE 

consciousness of His presence. In fact, if He 
is an unwelcome guest, He can be more and 
more completely shut out from our universe, 
until we can be almost certain that He will 
not speak to us again. We can be without 
hope, and without God in the world, if we 
choose. It would seem, by way of parenthesis, 
that these " all "-attributes have been ascribed 
more from a literary and aesthetic demand 
than from a religious one. Surely the Bible 
gives us to understand that there are stub- 
born wills, which God, if He will respect 
them as persons, cannot bend ; that there are 
outcomes which He watches rather than di- 
rects, and that there are dark places of the 
human soul where God is not present. But 
the Bible aside, — for we have for the present 
cut loose from authority, — God's nature only 
has meaning for us if we limit its scope. That 
is, however it all might have been created 
otherwise, since the fact remains that we as 
human beings do exist in the universe as we 
find it, the only motive for it all must be an 
end to which we contribute something, and 
which could not be brought about perfectly 
without us. We are not chess-men, but col- 
laborators. 



THE NATURE OF GOD AND OF MAN 75 

We must assume, moreover, if we are to 
consider the subject any further, that it is 
possible for us to comprehend to some degree 
this motive for creation. To say that we de- 
mand a God with a motive, and then not to 
seek for this motive, or at least not formulate 
a motive that would satisfy us if it were His, 
would be a very incomplete treatment of the 
subject. We have presumably been hunting 
for a motive for creation and have not found 
one, or perhaps have seemed to find too many. 
Sometimes the motive seems to be cruelty, 
sometimes a mere observation of development 
as such, with no end, or sometimes even a 
high amusement over man's absurdities. None 
of these reasons which do not involve a final- 
ity, an end wished for which is good in itself, 
are very satisfactory, and we are fatigued with 
our hunt. The data of the universe seem to 
point in all directions and to many possible 
motives. We shall therefore give up our search 
and begin the analysis of our real wishes. If 
we can decide what would be a supremely satis- 
fying motive, and what would be the means of 
such a will's expression, we may find such an 
expression at hand, and find, too, that we have 
a better right to hope for it than for any other. 



76 THE RIGHT TO BELIEVE 

Suppose we apply ourselves without timidity 
to the colossal task of trying to imagine our- 
selves as a God on the eve of Creation. This 
is surely a daring undertaking for finite minds. 
" Shall the clay say to him that fashioneth 
it^ What makest thou?" But when this very 
question was asked, the prophet, stern and 
contemptuous though he was of the presump- 
tion of weak humanity in addressing questions 
to its Creator, was obliged to admit that man 
had a right to inquire, and he trumpeted forth 
the Lord's answer : " I have not spoken in 
secret, in a dark place of the earth : I said not 
unto the seed of Jacob, Seek ye me in vain : I, 
the Lord, speak righteousness, I declare things 
that are right." 

If, then, God has not spoken in secret but 
in open places, — and He must have so spoken 
if we are to understand his nature in any de- 
gree, — what is the plan, the motive, the rea- 
son, that would prompt and justify a universe 
like ours ? 

This is a question to be worked out in a 
great epic and not in the simplest of prose. A 
poem might be written which should probe 
further back than ^^ Paradise Lost," or even 
Paradise Created, to expound the emotions 



THE NATURE OF GOD AND OF MAN 77 

of a solitary Divinity choosing to create at all. 
We might very fitly acknowledge at once that 
the question is too deep for us. But if we are 
determined to think through all possibilities 
without reserve, we must ask ourselves, " What 
could have been the reason ? " As we review 
the over-powering spectacle of the evolution 
of countless ages, the slow development of 
new forms and their apparent culmination in 
man, we are stupefied at the immensity of it 
all. Perhaps nothing is more astounding than 
that man — who so plainly is the outgrowth of 
lower forms, and whose organism bears the 
traces of the journey which it has traveled — 
suddenly turns his back on his past, and an- 
nounces to the rest of creation, " I am like you, 
you have helped to make me, but I am not of 
you. We are akin, but you are not my creator. 
Your society is not enough, I must talk with 
my God." If we were watching the process 
of evolution from the outside, perhaps nothing 
would astonish us more than this. Where did 
man get this idea? How does he dare to make 
such an assertion, which his more humble for- 
bears did not dream of ? It would almost seem 
as if this were the moment for which God had 
been waiting. What could be a more valid 



78 THE RIGHT TO BELIEVE 

reason for the long work of making a world 
of men, than that finally the world should turn 
and assert its own divinity, and provide not a 
problem alone, but a companion. 

Is this anthropomorphic ? It is, and what 
of it ? Any Divine motive must be of the same 
order as a human motive to be in the faintest 
degree comprehensible to us, and therefore 
we must fall into either anthropomorphism 
or agnosticism. There is no alternative, and 
it is as much an unproved creed to assert that 
God's motives cannot be fathomed, as to affirm 
that they can. Let us once more assure fear- 
ful souls that they are living no more by an 
unproved faith when they say, " I believe that 
God is a Person, who has made the world with 
its culmination in man, for the purpose of com- 
panionship with Himself," than if they say, 
" There is no God, and if there were I could not 
follow His motives." Some state of the case for 
or against must be true, and we are no more su- 
perstitious to believe what we hope than what 
we fear. Moreover, while we may say, ^^I am 
impartial, I believe absolutely nothing about 
the matter," we must live, and we must think 
as if one or the other were true, if we are to 
live and think at all. And as rational beings 



THE NATURE OF GOD AND OF MAN 79 

we prefer thought^ even upon unproved prem- 
ises, to either bodily or mental suicide. We 
could just as reasonably and as zealously de- 
vote ourselves to making rational the non-exist- 
ence o£ a God, or the absence o£ His beneficent 
motives, if that were the issue for which we 
hoped. To any one who calls us superstitious 
both in our desire for a God and in our high 
valuation of man, we can but answer : " We 
prefer this to the equal superstition of a desire 
for a mechanical world without God, and a 
lesser opinion of man's value. Let our oppo- 
nent make his case rational and we will attempt 
to make ours so." 

Suppose then that a God wants the compan- 
ionship of persons. That would be an adequate 
reason for any amount of world-making, for 
an infinite patience and an unbounded inter- 
est in the developing of His plans. It would 
also imply that a freedom to converse with Him 
or not to do so must be present in these per- 
sons to make their friendship of any value, and 
that, however different they might be from 
their Great Companion, they must have cer- 
tain important characteristics in common. We 
are assuming for the nature of God only the 
attributes we must have, only those we long 



80 THE RIGHT TO BELIEVE 

for ; and we will not adopt any others, how- 
ever classic, unless we want them. We do not 
long for an omnipotence that forces our choices ; 
for an omnipresence which makes us say, ^^God 
is in even the evil desires of our hearts " ; for we 
prefer to assume even the blackest responsibil- 
ity for them rather than to say that God is part 
of them. Even an omniscience that makes every 
detail of the game a foregone conclusion seems 
an oppressive possession ; so we do not admit it 
as harmonious with the highest reasonableness. 
We reserve the possibility for the emotions of 
joy or of disappointment in the Deity we are 
hoping for, and like to think that we can be 
even better than was expected of us, as well as 
worse. We do desire a power that can influence 
other personalities, as great characters can al- 
ways influence their kind without depriving 
them of freedom. Abraham Lincoln was not 
the only free man among his contemporaries ; 
yet certainly their actions would have been 
different if he had not existed. Napoleon was 
not the only person in Europe, nor did Paul 
deprive all his followers of their wills because 
he exerted his influence powerfully in one di- 
rection. An energy radiates from great per- 
sonahties, which makes their admirers want to 



THE NATURE OF GOD AND OF MAN 81 

follow them, just as it makes their opponents 
want to defy them ; and God's power shall be 
of their character, though of an extent and a 
might surpassing human examples. He must 
be always present, in the sense that no spatial 
limits divide the human soul from His, and 
that a human being can always call upon Him 
when he will. On the other hand, the human 
soul can preserve its own limitations and refuse 
to admit, not only His presence, but His exist- 
ence. Sometimes the greater personality insists 
on certain periods of recognition, — as when 
Saul of Tarsus was arrested unwillingly on 
his way to Damascus. Sometimes the greater 
waits for the summons of the less. As in any 
other matter, long habit makes intercourse 
either more easy or more difficult, so that a 
man may atrophy his power to commune with 
God if he chooses. Perhaps no one would hope 
that such a lack of opportunity to commune 
with His human creatures would atrophy God's 
power or His willingness to answer a human 
call. 

Our list of attributes does not need to be 
long. A Divine personality that, for some de- 
sire of His own nature, causes a race of men 
to work itself out through a long stage of de- 



82 THE RIGHT TO BELIEVE 

velopment^ to be companions of Himself and 
the objects of His supreme devotion, is a sim- 
ple conception. That this nature shall be su- 
premely good we demand ; this we must have. 
That His goodness shall include both justice 
and sympathy, we also demand, and a power 
and presence wide enough to give every man 
an opportunity to guess, in some slight man- 
ner at least. His character. That our actions 
make a real difference in the world's history 
and that we are to be not simply moved, but 
watched with an interest in the issue only 
greater in degree than our own, this we also 
demand, to give a dignity to human living. 
Who can say how far he would want this fore- 
sight to extend ? I do not feel myself less free 
because my friend knows I will not murder 
him, or because he feels certain I will not set 
the house on fire. Neither am I less free be- 
cause he knows that in all likelihood I shall 
sometimes lose my temper, or that I may for- 
get my appointments. He knows it because 
he knows me, but his knowing it does not 
make it happen. That an Infinite Personality, 
who has a peculiar access to all minds, which 
is not given to us, should have a knowledge 
of events to come, is highly probable, and I 



THE NATURE OF GOD AND OP MAN 83 

think we should wish it; for however little 
meaning the words Past and Future have 
to a timeless Beings if He understands the 
universe He has made, He undestands the 
significance these terms have for us. That 
this fore-knowledge should be complete we 
certainly do not crave ; and since an interest 
in world development seems more rational 
with some issues uncertain, and since we are 
at present dogmatic, we shall say His fore- 
knowledge is not complete. 

This, then, is our God, and this is the reason 
that we have been created. Why just this line 
of development was chosen, why we are al- 
lowed to suffer, why God does not manifest 
Himself more clearly, we shall consider later. 
We are interested now simply in finding a 
reason why a God should want a world with 
men in it, what a God would want His men to 
be, and what in turn men want their God to 
be. 

It would certainly be essential that the 
most important point in God's character should 
be the one most easily comprehended by man. 
That is, if the prime feature of His nature 
were the extent of His knowledge, we should 
have even more difficulty than we do now in 



84 THE RIGHT TO BELIEVE 

deciding how much we believe. The fact of 
the matter is, however, that we do not care so 
much about how much He knows, as we do 
about His goodness and His love for us. If 
we should have reason to think that some- 
times God did not know what would be the 
issue of a given struggle, we should not be 
so much disturbed as if we believed that He 
occasionally indulged in lapses from goodness. 
That we could not endure. Rather no God 
than one who is not wholly good. The good 
character of God is for us all the essential fact 
of God's character, and, arguing from ana- 
logy, very probably it is the first demand He 
makes of us. However much we may yearn 
for the love of our Creator, I suppose the 
most despairing religious penitent would be 
less revolted by the scorn and wrath of a good 
God, than by the love of a bad one. The 
beauty of holiness has at least this charm for 
us all, that whether we believe it to exist in 
God or in man, if a God exists at all, that 
must be His eternal attribute. It would seem 
almost as if this were of itself enough of a 
character with which to endow our Divinity ; 
but at any rate we should expect this, the 
most essential and yet the most easily under* 



THE NATURE OF GOD AND OF MAN 85 

stood trait of the Divine character, to be the 
form in which His invitations and His revela- 
tions to man would be couched. It is perhaps 
the only feature of the Divine nature which 
He can demand of us to share with Him. We 
are speaking for the present age of course. 
A million years from now, who shall say? 
Perhaps man can be more of a companion for 
his Maker in other respects as well. 

We must emphasize the importance of the 
moral world as our real bond with God, as 
our common language, because we find, low 
in the scale of holiness as we feel ourselves to 
be, that it represents the one claim we have 
to any universal advance over the lower ani- 
mals. Some of us, to be sure, have achieved 
great things in art, most of us have not. Some 
of us know a great deal, but most of us know 
very little. I stand with my dog before St. 
Mark's in Venice ; we look together at it, and 
I realize that I could no more have made it 
than he. We listen to a Wagnerian opera, 
and I know I could as little have created it as 
I could a world. We sit together on the steps 
of the Parthenon, and look out over the groves 
of Plato, the Lyceum of Aristotle, the prison 
of Socrates, and the Mars Hill of Paul, and I 



86 THE RIGHT TO BELIEVE 

feel that, so far as wisdom is concerned, my 
dog is more my brother than they. If my sal- 
vation depended on my genius for thought 
or creation, I should be in sorry case. That 
Michael Angelo could paint a ceiling proves 
nothing about me, and that he would be a fit 
companion for a beauty -loving God would 
prove, if it proved anything, that I could never 
be. We cannot group the human race in this 
fashion, and say that we are all stupendous 
creatures, because some of our species built 
cathedrals or wrote epics. We know that we 
are not all of that timber, and that any God 
who could be revealed only through the life 
of beauty or of wisdom must be an unknown 
quantity, not only to us, but to thousands 
who are even less gifted than we are. That 
God could reveal Himself in any channel, and 
that He has so done, is doubtless true; but 
a just God must make His avenue of approach 
one easy enough to understand, that the way- 
faring man, though a fool, may not err therein. 
It may be a blow to our self-love to relinquish 
any share in these brilliant human achieve- 
ments, and to admit that they are no more 
our doing than as if their creators had not 
happened to be of the same genus as we. But 



THE NATURE OF GOD AND OF MAN 87 

we always gain by any such sacrifice. Every 
loss means a certain freedom; and just as I 
am not related to the achievements of a Leo- 
nardo simply because we are both classed 
physiologically as human, so I am not related 
to the defects of the animal world because I 
share a back-bone with my dog, and have a 
nervous system akin to the frog's. If there 
were a God-communion possible for a Leo- 
nardo, simply through the avenue of art, or 
one for Kant only through his metaphysics, 
there would be no such communion possible 
for the rest of us just because we and these 
great ones were cousins. So, vice versa, if 
there is no God-communication possible for 
the lower animals, we as human beings are 
not necessarily without a God-language be- 
cause we too are cousins. The thing that binds 
us, the humblest of us, with human genius 
and with God, is our moral likeness, our abil- 
ity to see an ethical issue, and to choose duty 
for its own sake. This is our common lan- 
guage; this is the characteristic of God we 
can understand, however over-powering His 
knowledge and His power may be. 

The biologist may insist, ^' What folly to 
consider man as so different from the organ- 



88 THE EIGHT TO BELIEVE 

isms from which he has sprung. We are all 
protoplasm together, and how can one branch 
of the family be called children of God, and 
the others children of matter ? " No doubt it 
is an astonishing fact that man has reared his 
head and announced his connection with an 
invisible Almighty; but the fact that he has 
done so entitles him to consideration. It all 
depends on the question whether we find our 
differences from the animals below us more 
significant, even if not more numerous, than 
our likenesses to them. That our kinship with 
them and our common root with them affect 
in the remotest degree our possible commu- 
nication with God, or our destiny as planned 
by Him, it is difficult to see. Suppose a man 
surrounds himself with enough steak, pota- 
toes, and water, to last him, say, seven years. 
At the end of that time, his entire body will 
be made over. Each cell of his bony and fleshy 
tissue has been renewed by these three in- 
gredients and the air he has breathed, so that 
strictly nothing is left of him of the period 
before he began this diet. Would he thereby 
consider that he had lost his birthright? 
Would he be crushed by the sense of being 
beefsteak or a potato? So far as intimacy of 



THE NATURE OP GOD AND OF MAN 89 

connection is concerned, and a recreation of 
each of his cells made possible through theirs, 
he cannot deny a certain sonship. But he is 
not of their kin, and he knows it. 

Arguing in the same manner (for while the 
foregoing analogy is not perfect, it may be 
suggestive), though our kinship with the 
other animals were more evident than it is ; 
even if we still went on all fours, or lived in 
trees, as soon as we felt the impulsion of an 
inward voice of conscience, and chose to talk 
with our God as well as with our fellows, our 
difference from the rest of creation would be 
more profound than our likeness. We should 
have become to some extent companions of 
the Deity. 

We shall assume, then, that God's motive 
in creation was to make possible a race of 
beings who should yearn for Him, and should 
create an image of Him in their souls, as He 
had created them out of a kindred desire for 
their existence. It is this supreme alternative 
of mutual love or of mutual annihilation that 
makes man to some extent God^s equal. 

Granted that this is the most reasonable 
motive, and perhaps the only motive at once 
reasonable and sympathetic, that we can con- 



90 THE RIGHT TO BELIEVE 

ceive for our creation, how could a God com- 
municate with such beings when they were 
finally evolved, and ready for Him? We can 
understand that a forced communion with us 
would have defeated His own end of a volun- 
tary companionship, and that our devotion, if 
it did not arise from a desire of our own na- 
ture, would be too little godlike to be worth 
the having. On the other hand, was not this 
freedom to ignore Him a dangerous gift? 
Did He not with this very dignity of relation 
between us run the risk of not being able to 
communicate with us at all? From even a 
cursory glance at history or present-day so- 
ciety, this seems undoubtedly to be the case. 
Surely humanity, for long periods and over 
wide areas, has enjoyed its own society exclu- 
sively, with no yearning for the Divine pres- 
ence ; and while doubtless many we know not 
of have always kept an altar-fire burning, it 
has not always reflected much light on society 
at large. Can we fathom to any degree what 
must have been the effect of such exclusion 
on the mind of God? What would be the 
emotion of a Creator in seeing the failure of 
His ripest work, the indifference of His dear- 
est children? What extra means of com- 



THE NATURE OF GOD AND OF MAN 91 

munion would He strive to establish? and 
would there be a point where even a God 
must say, '^ I can do no more " ? 

So far as we know, even the lowest orders 
of savages have some kind of conception of 
Deity. However incomplete may be their es- 
timate of Him, and however detached they 
are from daily communion, to say nothing of 
friendship with Him, still the existence of an 
invisible Power seems a possible conception 
to all human minds. We shall not try to probe 
too far into the thoughts of historic man, 
since that involves an ethnological knowledge 
of which we cannot be certain. But at least 
this common capacity for conceiving an in- 
visible God, to whom man is under some kind 
of obligation, seems a universal gift. Just as 
primitive man talked with his fellows and 
entered into ceremonials with his kind, he 
talked and made obeisance before his God. 
But this was not enough. Certain men who 
had the sense of communion with God more 
vividly than others became convinced that 
God was not simply a power, but a power for 
righteousness. 

This was a further revelation for those who 
had a desire for something higher ; but, just as 



92 THE RIGHT TO BELIEVE 

before some had doubtless believed and some 
disbelieved in anv God, so now some wanted 
a good God, and some did not. With certain 
men God had succeeded, and with others He 
had failed. Can we not imagine God saying, 
as indeed He has been interpreted by the 
prophets, '^ Wherefore do ye spend money for 
that which is not bread? and your labour for 
that which satisfieth not?" or, to translate it 
into prose, " Is it possible that these men can- 
not see that goodness is better than sin, that it 
is folly to ignore a God whom they may have 
for the asking, only to torment themselves 
with other godless men who demand a high 
price for their companionship?" Through 
those who had come to understand Him, He 
sent His message, ^^ Incline your ear, and come 
unto me ; hear and your soul shall live"; and 
periodically in the world's history, because of 
these special appeals from men who had a more 
intimate knowledge of God than they, some 
have inclined their ear and have come, and 
some have not. 

If, then, an inborn tendency to speak to God 
was not enough to make men believe in Him, 
if the messages and eloquence of gifted seers 
did not always open communication, what 



THE NATURE OF GOD AND OF MAN 93 

could ? What was there left to try ? No appeal 
to the sensations in the way of visions, voices, 
touches, feelings of presence, trances, stigmata, 
or speaking in strange tongues, could make 
a very widespread impression. If we are to be- 
lieve records, everv one of these methods was 
attempted, to arrest the attention of mankind; 
but the very fact that we seldom believe such 
reports is evidence enough that we make it 
impossible for God to speak to us in that way. 
It is a curious fact that the humblest man may 
assure us that he exists by speaking to us aloud; 
but nowadays (whatever may have been the 
case formerly), even if we admit the theoretic 
possibihty that a God could produce auditory 
sensations in our minds, few of us consider 
such a voice convincing. A man who hears an 
unseen speaker nowadays does not answer, but 
goes to a nerve specialist ; and if we all heard 
voices, we should consider ourselves mad, but 
not religious. I am only re-insisting on this 
point, to indicate how we limit the avenues 
of communication with a possible God. It is 
surely an advance to a more spiritual concep- 
tion of Divinity when we do not depend on 
sense-stimulation, always provided we do not 
at the same time disbelieve in Him for not ex- 



94 THE RIGHT TO BELIEVE 

pressing Himself in a way we should not credit 
if He did. In the ages when men believed in 
voices, they heard them ; when they disbelieve 
in them they hear them as heavenly voices no 
more. The test of validity in any case has always 
been — the effect on the moral life of the in- 
dividual. If he is no better than before, if no 
great resolve results from the interview whether 
of voices or of thoughts, we question the actu- 
ality of his communion. If he becomes a Paul, 
we are less likely to question the reality of his 
experience on the road to Damascus. 

Let me say right here, that any sharp dis- 
tinction between God's speaking to our ears 
and His speaking to our minds is, on closer 
scrutiny, a meaningless one. What happens 
when I hear a spoken word ? What happens 
when I think a spoken word but do not hear 
it? When I hear a word spoken, it means that 
air- waves have been set in vibration ; they strike 
against my ear-drum, they are communicated 
through little bones to my inner ear, whence 
they are taken up by nerve-endings spread out 
in the cochlea, and from thence transmitted 
along the auditory nerve to my brain. There 
is a particular area of my brain, just behind 
my temples, devoted to the reception of sound- 



THE NATURE OF GOD AND OF MAN 95 

stimuli, and if this area were destroyed, I should 
be as unable to hear as if my ear-drum were 
gone or my auditory nerve paralyzed. This, 
then, is the circuit for sound vibrations to make 
before I can hear a spoken word. If, on the 
other hand, I merely think a spoken word, but 
do not hear it, it means that this same brain-area 
is active, but without the aid of stimuli com- 
ing from the outside. The auditory brain-cen- 
tre has been excited, not by vibrations from 
outside, but by stimulations from other centres 
in the brain itself. If this auditory area were 
destroyed, we could not only not hear sounds, 
but we could not remember or imagine them. 
The only difference, then, between the two 
situations is, that in one case the excitement 
comes to the auditory area through the ear, 
and in the other case from another part of the 
brain. Any idea you may have — scientifically 
speaking — is just as causally brought about, 
whether its stimulus happens to come by way 
of an ear-drum, or, say, by way of the visual 
centre in the back of your brain. We must 
understand this very clearly, so that we may 
not profess toward any one possible God-mani- 
festation a scorn that we do not toward any 
other. We cannot in reason sneer against the 



96 THE RIGHT TO BELIEVE 

voice that Samuel heard, and yet believe in the 
voice of conscience that we have ourselves. 
Both are accompanied by brain-excitement of 
some kind, one by way of the auditory nerve, and 
one by way of the association-centres perhaps ; 
but in any case both have nervous accompani- 
ment of some kind, and the brain is not a whit 
more ethereal or spiritual in its essence than 
the auditory nerve. It is quite plain that, scien- 
tifically speaking, there is no room for God 
anywhere on this nervous circuit. If He is not 
a material force, He cannot set air- waves in mo- 
tion to strike against our tympanum without 
tearing a hole in conservation of energy, — 
which seems to be one of His universal laws. 
Just as little could He set up a nervous excite- 
ment in our brain and bring an idea into our 
minds, that would not have followed previous 
causes. If God put one nervous thrill into a 
brain-cell, and thereby roused up a cortical 
stimulation not related to other nervous causes, 
it would be as much of a break in causal laws, 
and as unbelievable a miracle, as if He thun- 
dered sermons from all the stones. We are, 
then, much misled if we have taken refuge 
behind the scientific possibility of convers- 
ing with our God in mind, but not in voice. 



THE NATURE OF GOD AND OF MAN 97 

The possibility of either stands or falls with 
the other, and it is only by their fruits we 
shall know them. Our desire for food is physi- 
cally a matter of certain brain-stimulation and 
nervous excitement in the throat and stomach ; 
our determination to risk our life for a friend 
is also accompanied by certain brain excite- 
mentj and our affection for our parents has 
no less nervous stimulation than our desire to 
go to sleep. We may make as much distinction 
as we like between the value of these different 
experiences, but one is no more apart from 
brain-excitement than the other, and our desire 
for God neither more nor less than they. 

Where, then, in this closed circuit of physi- 
cal stimulation, which is transmitted along ner- 
vous tissue, is there the slightest place for God? 
Grant that He exists, and that He wants to 
speak with us, how, from our heights of scien- 
tific logic, can we allow Him to? Our nervous 
systems accompany (Heaven knows why !) every 
slightest thought or sensation we have with 
physical, that is, nervous excitement, and how 
by any possibility can a spiritual God interpose 
His influence without shattering this closely 
knit chain of physical cause and effect which 
He apparently willed, and v^hich we have with 



98 THE RIGHT TO BELIEVE 

SO much pains discovered? After creating His 
worlds is He not confronted with the fact that 
to converse with His chosen ones is not only 
difficulty but of its nature impossible? 

There is plainly no room for God in the 
causal universe He has made ; and curiously 
enough there is no room for us either! God's 
mind and ours have got to walk off the scene 
together, there is no nook or cranny for either 
of us ! For the case of our own mentality is 
as impossible of explanation as God's, and the 
possibility of knowing, myself, what is in my 
own mind, is as inexplicable as God's know- 
ing it. 

If this does not seem a real problem to any 
reader, I advise him to omit the discussion al- 
together. It is likely to be a real issue only to 
those trained to respect the universality of the 
law of conservation of energy, and to whom 
it is a point of honor not to abandon this posi- 
tion at any cost. 

We are of this loyal band (though here, 
again, conservation of energy is as much a 
matter of faith as religion, as no experiment 
has ever absolutely proved it), and we are not 
willing to allow our causal universe to be shot 
throuofh with holes where non-material forces 



THE NATURE OF GOD AND OF MAN 99 

have brought material results to pass. We are 
confronted with the following situation as re- 
gards our own mental life, and to a scientist 
who loves above all things a neat array of well- 
adjusted facts, it is indeed a trying case. We 
have a perfect physical and nervous connec- 
tion between outward stimuli and muscular or 
nervous reaction. The moth flies past my eye, 
and my eye winks ; or in a more complicated 
situation, the visual stimulus arouses associated 
brain-cells, finally the motor area is excited, 
and my hand grasps the moth. In any case, 
and no matter how complex the experience be- 
comes, brain-cell excites brain-cell, incoming 
energy goes over into outgoing, and mean- 
while what is our mind about ? What conceiv- 
able connection is there between such nervous 
processes and a mind ? The processes cannot 
cause the mind and the mind cannot cause the 
processes ; and if they are simply galloping in 
harness, why are they doing it ? Moreover, if 
we grant that a mind at any present instant 
knows what is in itself, how can we explain 
its memories ? I have not been thinking what 
my name is until this moment, yet I had not 
forgotten it. It was simply out of my mind and 
now it is in it ; and we say, psychologically 



100 THE RIGHT TO BELIEVE 

speakings that certain cells corresponding to 
my name have become stimulated in the speech- 
centres o£ my brain. That such stimulation 
take place we will grant, and yet we might 
analyze this nervous discharge ever so care- 
fully and still we should find no name in it, 
and since the name was not in my mind either, 
where was it? What does knowing consist of 
in this mental realm? It is not an explanation 
of this question to say anything at all about 
the brain or nervous system. We will admit at 
once that every thought, whether of concrete 
objects or of God, has a physical brain-state 
lumbering along beside it, that prayer as well 
as reflex action has nervous analogues from 
which it does not part. But the mystery of 
the mind rushing on, clinging to or dropping 
its memories, unlocalized, creating a constant 
illusion that it is affecting the constitution of 
material things (though as sturdy scientists we 
will not admit that it does), is so inconceivable, 
that if we were not forced to acknowledge it, 
we certainly never should. There is absolutely 
no room for a mind in a causal universe, and 
the ardent logician would gladly give his up if 
he could, to prove his point. For this reason 
psychology has its incessant recourse to physio- 



THE NATURE OF GOD AND OF MAN 101 

logy. It cannot keep its balance in the surging 
currents of mental life, without standing on 
the firm ground of its physiological accompani- 
ments. It first of all tries to link a mental fact 
to a nervous one ; then with a breath of relief 
goes on talking about the nervous substructure, 
because mind of itself is so hard to manage. 
The point of all this digression on the profound 
mystery of a mind keeping itself distinct from 
other minds, and clinging to one nervous sys- 
tem with which it has no conceivable connec- 
tion, is just this: while it has been taken for 
granted that a healthy nervous system is a very 
effective means of allowing us to come into 
contact with our neighbors, it could just as 
well be said that any nervous system at all is 
a perfect device for keeping all our minds apart ! 
Because my mind is weighted with a running 
mate that occasionally goes astray, or too fast, 
or too slow, and because your team has simi- 
lar peculiarities, — just for this reason you are 
you, and I am I. If all our organisms were iden- 
tical we could approach a one-ness of sensations, 
of emotion, of sympathy, such as we can now 
experience only in what we call our highest 
moments, when we come nearest together in a 
common cause. As it is, not only geographical 



102 THE RIGHT TO BELIEVE 

difference^ but every bias o£ habit and heredity, 
grafts into our nervous make-up a disparity 
that makes us able to be of one mind with but 
few human beings. We can say that such va- 
riety is what makes hfe interesting, but per- 
haps we shall see later that the one-ness of har- 
monious minds does not mean a real loss of 
individuality, and that the highest attainment 
of a person is to forget that he is one. 

Now suppose a mind not linked with any 
nervous system (and we have seen that theo- 
retically it is even more reasonable than the 
opposite case), what is to prevent its linking 
itself with the nervous system of any mind 
that asks it ? 

Everything that passes through the human 
mind is that mind's own property, so far as 
other human minds are concerned. The im- 
pedimenta of other minds prevent their pene- 
trating to ours. But supposing the mind of 
God mingled with the stream of our own con- 
sciousness, using our tools, adapting itself to 
our limited capacities, and becoming for the 
time being part of our mind, — is not that 
really what we mean by communion with God, 
and is it any more inconceivable than com- 
munion with myself ? 



THE NATURE OF GOD AND OF MAN 103 

Even here God cannot force a way. Just as 
with an articulated message from God, we 
could always affirm that it thundered, that the 
wind was blowing, that it was the sound of 
rushing water, so with a God-consciousness 
mingling with ours we can say, we were ex- 
cited, it was suggestion, the result of emotional 
fatigue, etc., etc. ; and if we do not hope for a 
God, we need not credit Him. We may always 
call all our thought our own. Who shall judge 
but ourselves? But if we will not admit the 
possibility of a God speaking to us, it is equiva- 
lent to saying, " If there were a God, by no 
possibility through endless ages could He speak 
with the men He has created"; and by such 
a conclusion we make any conceivable God 
weaker than we are ourselves. 

God if He exists planned our development. 
The only reason we can conceive for such a 
creation is the desire to communicate with us ; 
the only way even a God can speak with man 
is through man's mind, and the duty remain- 
ing for a man is that of listening. 

It is a difficult piece of work for a child to 
begin to talk or to understand, but he learns 
because he wants to. If he did not want to, 
he could live his life in silence. It is a hard 



104 THE RIGHT TO BELIEVE 

matter at first to distinguish the mind o£ God 
from our own. If we want to, however, we 
shall learn both to speak and to understand. 
If we do not want to, we shall not learn ; and 
in time, if we are careful to practice indiffer- 
ence, in all probability God will not trouble us 
further. It is our privilege to create such a 
God as we have done in our universe, or not 
to do so, as it was His to create or not create 
us in His. 



IV 

THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST 

If my readers are at all like the usual specula- 
tor on religious problems, they are by this time 
exceedingly restive. Some one is doubtless say- 
ing, " What I wanted was a conclusive proof 
that God exists — all that I have is an even 
chance. I am entitled to believe, if I choose, 
what has just fifty per cent of a chance of be- 
ing a falsehood, and that is no basis for a 
faith." We can only reiterate two things. First, 
you do not want a convincing proof. A 
thorough proof means that God would be within 
the range of science or logic, that is, a measur- 
able finite quantity, and hence no God. Second, 
we are coming to see that the chances are more 
than half in favor of a God. We have tried 
to start from the most meagre allowance of 
faith and knowledge that any one who had 
enough intelligence to ask the question at all 
could have, but we must now take a wider 
view. We are still assuming that we want a 
God, and that we want to know His nature 
more thoroughly. Are there not degrees of 



106 THE RIGHT TO BELIEVE 

probability, which point more decidedly in one 
direction than another, even though they do 
not prove the issue absolutely ? 

Suppose that an extraordinary invention has 
appeared on the market, and there is some 
doubt as to who is its author. The man who 
could have devised such a thing has just died;, 
so that we cannot get a direct answer from 
him, and we can only decide the matter by pro- 
babilities. A good many scientists had been 
working along the same lines, and the ques- 
tion is, "Is this particular machine his or 
theirs ? " Our decision must rest upon our esti- 
mate of the invention and of the man. If it 
is considered sufficiently extraordinary we say 
the great man must have made it. If, on the 
other hand, we do not think it is very remark- 
able, we decide that the other men may have 
done so. Even witnesses' testimony would not 
weigh against this decision by estimate. If the 
invention is too wonderful for a small man to 
have made, we will not believe him, no matter 
how often he assures us that he was its author ; 
if, on the other hand, it is commonplace, no 
one is interested to deny the authorship of any 
one who cares to claim it. Any one would have 
a right to call us stubborn if we refused to 



THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST 107 

admit that a great inventor had probably been 
the contriver of some unique device, even 
though from the nature of the case, no one 
could prove it. It all depends on whether we 
consider the invention too great to have been 
made by any but the most able scientist, no 
matter how many lesser men may assert the 
contrary. 

If, moreover, the invention was something 
we wanted very much and had been looking 
for, and if we had reason to believe that the 
absent inventor would have had special inter- 
est in this kind of a thing more than all others, 
we should loyally feel it to be much safer to 
erect a monument to him in token of our ap- 
preciation, than to leave him unrecognized be- 
cause we could not prove our point. Not only 
the point would not be proved, but nothing 
could prove it. The man is gone, his laboratory 
and papers were burned, and voices from the 
dead, angels in the sky, or any cataclysm one's 
imagination can devise would not prove the 
point further than this : that the thing bespoke 
the authorship of the only man who could have 
made it. 

We can see at once that most of our ordi- 
nary decisions in life are not based on proofs 



108 THE RIGHT TO BELIEVE 

at all, but on likelihood, plus inclination, plus 
a certain capacity in the most able of us to 
tell at a glance the significance of certain ear- 
marks of truth. We call a man unreasonable 
or eccentric if he does not accept the prob- 
able explanation of a thing, even though he 
may never get access to a proof. It is to our 
credit that we regard the matter of our re- 
ligious life as demanding a more serious treat- 
ment than the decision as to who took our 
umbrella. But this seriousness becomes mis- 
taken, when we set ourselves to demand a 
proof that we do not want, or refuse to accept 
an evidence that we find fulfills every demand 
that we can honestly make. 

The question of Christ's divinity depends 
essentially on the same sort of evidence ; and 
if we are to argue in the same fashion that we 
are obliged to in ordinary matters, we must 
admit that the chances are rather more than 
half in favor of His being a special revela- 
tion. 

But some one may object that in our illus- 
tration one thing was taken for granted, that 
in the religious question is not so certain. We 
were then sure that there had been an in- 
ventor, while we are not certain enough even 



THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST 109 

now that God exists, to permit such conclu- 
sions as to His probable handiwork. Of course, 
if we are to progress in any argument, we 
must, simply for the sake of the discussion if 
nothing more, consider a point settled for the 
time being, and pass on to another. We are 
now convinced that it is essential for life and 
for logic to believe something, to hold one of 
two opposite alternatives, and we know that 
we have as good a right, and a reasonable in- 
clination, to choose the alternative we prefer. 
We will assume, then, in the present chapter 
that we have chosen to believe in such a God 
as we have described, and that the hypothe- 
sis of God's existence shall be considered as 
firmly established as possible. Our concern 
now is only this: granting such a God, is 
there any reason to believe that Christ is His 
especial manifestation? Are our chances here 
only half and half as before, or has our ac- 
ceptance of the first tenet made the second 
more necessary? Once on the path of one al- 
ternative, are we to have an easier time of it? 
It seems to me decidedly that we are. 
Granting our God, a Christ seems more highly 
probable than otherwise ; and granting a 
Christ, we are equally driven to belief in a 



110 THE RIGHT TO BELIEVE 

God. We have granted our God, so we must 
try to find the absolute reasonableness of such 
a manifestation of Himself. 

There are two types of difficulty which one 
faces in considering this question. One man 
finds it impossible to conceive how a human 
being could exist with the peculiar connec- 
tion with God which believers find in Christ. 
Others, granting the possibility, fail to find 
evidence in Christ Himself of such a connec- 
tion. These difficulties are exactly the same in 
character as those which we met in our search 
for evidences of God. Some of us could not 
conceive how such a Being could exist at all, 
while others failed to find convincing proof 
of His existence, granted its conceivability. 
Or, in the words of our illustration, some of 
us find the invention too astonishing and too 
intricate to be real; while others of us, ad- 
mitting that the stories of this mechanism are 
correct, do not consider it remarkable enough 
to point to a very distinguished inventor. 

Is it, then, conceivable that God should at 
some time have taken complete possession of 
a human frame, instead of partial possession ? 
Can we mean anything different from this 
when we say the Divinity of Christ? And if 



THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST 111 

a man acts in every way through his life as 
we are bound to admit that God, in our high- 
est ideal of Him, would act in a similar posi- 
tion, are we not forced to say that he is the 
expression of God's own person? If the per- 
fection of a man's life would not convince us 
that he was in a certain sense set apart from 
the rest of us as a God-man, is there any con- 
ceivable trait of mind, body, estate, that would 
offer sufficient proof of it ? Or is our attitude 
this: ''I will grant that God if He chose 
might take full possession of a human frame, 
and that if He did so, I would call such a per- 
son Divine in character ; but no possible traits 
of character would convince me that any man 
had such a nature. Nothing conceivable would 
ever make me think that any man was a 
Christ." 

This position is plainly illogical. Either a 
hypothesis is alive or it is dead. We are not 
making the possibility of God's expression of 
Himself in human form a live hypothesis, un- 
less we will accept some thinkable kind of 
evidence as sufficient to substantiate it one 
way or the other. Either I must say, '' I will 
accept any man as an entire expression of 
God who is perfectly wise, or perfectly beauti- 



112 THE RIGHT TO BELIEVE 

f ul, or perfectly good/' or admit any other 
characteristics, or group of them, as sufficient 
ground for acceptance; or else I must say, 
^^It is impossible that any man could be an 
expression of God " ; and we have thereby 
killed this hypothesis, and must support 
another one, giving reasons for an opposite 
conviction. But we must not, in our case, say 
that the Divine man is a dead possibility, be- 
cause we have already admitted that if God 
can at any time, and for the shortest duration, 
take partial possession of a human mind, and 
thereby of his body. He can theoretically 
occupy the body and be absolutely identified 
with the mind of a man throughout his whole 
life. This is as possible as that any mind can 
occupy any body. A Christ is then conceiv- 
able, and the only question left is whether we 
have such a Christ or must look for another. 

In the first place, do we want a Christ at 
all? If not, nothing obliges us to pursue the 
subject further. Moreover, would such a God 
as we have formed for our ideal want a Christ ? 
Is there a high reasonableness that, after the 
revelations of Himself in human minds, after 
some special revelations through men more 
spiritually gifted than others, after a long 



THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST 113 

world-history where virtue had come to gain 
a certain value, after man had groped for a 
God and many had found Him with only these 
first means, — is it reasonable that God should 
say, " I will give them myself not only as a 
Conscience, as a Law, as a World, as a Deity, 
but as a Man ? Is there anything more that I 
can do?" And is there anything else think- 
able that He could have done? So far as I 
know, although many have found the evidence 
for what God has done insufficient to prove 
that He did it, no one has offered a suggestion 
as to what would be accepted as a proof of 
His authorship if it were produced. No one 
who finds Christ's appearance an unreasonable 
demonstration of a Deity has told us what 
would be more reasonable ; and until any one 
can do so, we must accept what seems to us 
the most fit. That it had seemed a reasonable 
expectation to some men is certain, in that long 
before Christ's birth' the coming of a Messiah 
was looked for. They did not picture Him 
exactly as He was. Because of His very absence 
they could not know the kind of a God that He 
declared His Father to be, and hence could not 
know exactly how such a God would express 
Himself. But their conception of a Messiah 



114 THE RIGHT TO BELIEVE 

at least kept pace with their idea of a God, 
and that God would some time appear on 
earth they confidently hoped. There is per- 
haps no more impressive line of figures in the 
great Sistine ceiling than those seated groups 
of shadowed forms, quietly and solemnly look- 
ing forward to their hoped-for Saviour. These 
figures are often overlooked, for the more 
striking portrayals of the Creation and the 
Fall; but there they sit, unconcerned, with 
the glory about them, eternally looking into 
the distance for the Messiah who shall be 
born. That mighty painter who did not hesi- 
tate to attempt the form of God as well as of 
men, might have added another picture in 
which the Creator Himself should gaze past 
His earlier work to the great manifestation of 
Himself which was to be, and as much long- 
ing would have been in His expression for this 
last possible link between Himself and His 
children, as we see already in the faces of 
those patient watchers. 

It is reasonable, then, that God should plan 
such a revelation ; and since we have already 
decided that perfect knowledge, beauty of 
form, size, power, and all the other attributes 
already named are not essential to our idea of 



THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST 115 

God, It follows naturally that the form His 
incarnation would have to take would be 
simply perfect goodness^ nothing more and 
nothing less. A man with unlimited know- 
ledge would impress us mightily, but not as 
being divine. Such men have currently been 
supposed in league with the Evil One rather 
than with God, if their wisdom was too ex- 
tensive to be canny. Handsome men, long- 
lived men, powerful men, gifted men, in fact, 
every sort of man has existed or may conceiv- 
ably exist without impressing us as especially 
related to a God; but a good man, and above 
all a perfectly good man, must give us pause. 
Since this is above all the characteristic we 
demanded in God, since this, in fact, was the 
only aspect of the ordinary man that made 
him essentially different from the animals, we 
should expect that this would be the para- 
mount feature of the man in whom God should 
perfectly express Himself. There have been 
good men always, there always will be. The 
only difference between the divine man and 
the good man is that one is perfectly good, 
and the other is not, — and this is all the differ- 
ence in the world. 

Nothing is ever gained by suppression of 



116 THE RIGHT TO BELIEVE 

our honest conviction, and some of us must 
admit at once that goodness does not impress 
us as very striking. We are conscious of a 
distinct feeling of disappointment when we 
think that perfection of goodness is all that 
we are to find in our Divine Man. Certainly 
Christ's contemporaries felt this disappoint- 
ment, and many of them refused to believe 
that such a simple affair as perfection of vir- 
tue was enough to assert divinity. With them 
as with us, however, there is considerable con- 
fusion when we try to formulate what else we 
want if goodness is not enough. No one, so 
far as I know, has been able to state what 
other trait of character he would wish added ; 
but we all have perhaps a vague desire for 
tempests and earthquakes rather than for a 
still small voice. This we must admit is rather 
childish, and a demand that will not survive a 
close analysis. Whatever our irrational desire 
for more dazzling characteristics, we must ad- 
mit that, after all, goodness is sufficient unto 
itself, so long as it is perfect. But here rises 
another objection : How are we to know that 
Christ was perfect ? There have been many 
good men ; we have known some ourselves in 
whose characters we could discover no flaw, 



THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST 117 

and yet neither we nor they considered them 
divine. 

Here I believe v\^e find the crux o£ the 
whole matter. Good men — men even so good 
that we do not venture to find any evil in 
them — are noticeable for the fact that they 
do not consider themselves perfect. Far from 
that, their very goodness makes them sensitive 
to certain defects in their own nature which 
we cannot see, and which perhaps we are too 
dull to notice in ourselves. They do not call 
themselves perfect, or if they do, our enthu- 
siasm for them cools, and we consider that 
their very satisfaction is a blemish, even 
though it may be the only one. If we really 
think the matter through we see that the final 
judge of a man's perfection of character must 
be himself after all. There comes a certain 
point of outward goodness — of fulfillment of 
every obligation of kindness, generosity, and 
self-sacrifice — where an outsider must admit 
he can point to no duty unperformed, no grace 
of character visibly lacking, and only the man 
himself can know whether he has really ex- 
pressed God's will entirely and is become a 
perfect embodiment of divinity. If a man 
makes such an assertion, and we feel that he 



118 THE RIGHT TO BELIEVE 

has no right to consider his Hfe such a stand- 
ard of virtue, we are shocked and disgusted 
with him more than we should be if he had 
committed some more dangerous sin. We are 
careful of our ideals. We resent a pretense of 
virtue more than an actual vice, because if our 
standard becomes confused, what is our guide ? 
With an open sinner we know how to deal. 

The situation is this. When a man says that 
he expresses divine perfection, his statement 
is either blasphemous, insane, or it is true. All 
of these interpretations were put upon the as- 
sumption of Christ. When He quietly affirmed 
before Pilate and the priests that He was the 
Christ, the Son of the Blessed, the high priest 
rent his clothes and asked what further wit- 
ness of His blasphemy was necessary. Others 
considered Him a madman, and still others be- 
lieved His testimony. There seems to be no 
other course to take. Either He spoke the 
truth, or He did not ; and if not. His assertion 
was a voluntary misstatement, or it arose from 
an uncontrollable aberration of mind. If they 
did not believe Him, it was more reasonable 
to take this offense seriously than to let it pass 
with indifference. It would indeed be a more 
serious state of affairs than it is in the world, 



THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST 119 

if it were considered a light matter for a man 
to assert his absolute oneness with God. 

We all consider Paul a good man, who died 
with the assurance that he had fought the 
good fight ; and yet Paul could never free him- 
self from the conviction of his own sin. Ste- 
phen was a good man, but he died with a 
vision of Christ in glory, and not with a reve- 
lation of himself as returning to his native 
sphere. Good men ever since the world began 
have lived and died with a more or less tri- 
umphant conviction that they have finished 
the work that was given them to do, but never 
do we tolerate the assumption that they have 
been wholly what God would have been in 
their place ; and indeed such assumptions are 
conspicuously absent from the noblest char- 
acters. Their feeling of imperfection is in di- 
rect ratio to their spiritual life, with the excep- 
tion of Christ. He used His own name and 
the name of His Father interchangeably, and 
affirmed that no one knew the real nature of 
God but Himself and those who learned of the 
Father through Him. Do we feel the same 
distrust of such an assumption that we should 
feel if Paul had said, '' Come unto me, Paul, 
and I will give you eternal life " ? Should we 



120 THE RIGHT TO BELIEVE 

honor the noble martyrdom of Stephen if he 
had called out to his persecutors, " Hereafter 
shall ye see Stephen sitting on the right hand of 
power, and coming in the clouds of Heaven " ? 
No, most of us feel a right, a fitness in Christ's 
making such statements, which we deny to 
the best of good men. Or if we do not feel 
such a right (and many nurtured in other 
creeds doubtless do not), why do we not ? Let 
some one who calls this man blasphemous or 
mad, instead of God-like, tell us what trait 
He lacks, what fault He showed, what kind of 
a man God incarnate must be if we are to be- 
lieve His testimony ! If Christ were the expres- 
sion of God, He must not only have known 
it, but He must necessarily have said so. We 
believe the verdict of good men on themselves, 
we believe the testimony of a righteous wit- 
ness ; or if we disbelieve, we must produce a 
reason for it, as we should expect the world 
to give a valid reason for disbelieving us. We 
have no right to call Christ insane for no 
other reason than that He made such state- 
ments concerning Himself, if His life was 
otherwise normal, and if the statement is not 
in itself unthinkable. We have found that 
sucli an expression of God was not only think- 



THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST 121 

able, but to be expected. Moreover, it had 
been expected, and we must have some other 
reason for disbelief when He comes, than sim- 
ply the stupendous nature of an assertion 
which if it were true must be stupendous, and 
which must be asserted by the man Himself. 
On one occasion Christ seemed to deny 
His own goodness. A man came to Him say- 
ing, " Good master, what good thing shall 
I do that I may have eternal life ? " thereby 
taking a casuistic view, as if one good deed 
added to another would bring a total that 
should entitle the doer to a suitable reward. He 
asked Christ as a man who had done enough 
good deeds to enable Him to give advice, and 
Christ repudiated such a view of Himself, and 
refused to be called good. His goodness con- 
sisted of His Father speaking through Him, 
not of this, that, or the other thing he might 
have done. But neither here nor in any other 
record of Jesus, do we find a hint of regret 
for any of His deeds. There is no feeling of 
imperfection, no longing for a more complete 
spiritual life, — a state of affairs unprecedented 
in the case of any man so sensitive to sin and 
so simple in his whole life as He. If He spoke 
an untruth in claiming to be one with God, 



122 THE RIGHT TO BELIEVE 

the greatest prophet in the world was mad or 
a hypocrite. Moreover^ He must have been 
mistaken on the most essential point of all, — 
His own relation with the God whom He was 
interpreting. Is it easier to believe this, or 
to believe that what He said was true, and 
that the Messiah for whom the world had been 
looking had really come ? 

This is, however, not quite enough to say 
concerning the assumption of Christ. Since 
any expression of God in the visible world 
must take on the limitations of time and space, 
it comes thereby within the domain of history ; 
and while that gives an additional evidence, it 
brings an additional burden. So long as an 
acquaintance with God is simply a matter of 
my own experience, no one but myself can 
affirm or deny it, and I have the advantage 
and the disadvantage of its being unassailable 
by outside influence. If, however, this expres- 
sion of God has become an historical fact, 
I have the advantage of its tangibility, the 
support of many minds, but also the diffi- 
culty that some one may say the history is 
incorrect or the interpretation has been false. 
We cannot be certain of history as we can be 
sure of experience; and if any one calls in 



THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST 123 

question the data, the facts, the authenticity 
of the record, we cannot answer in just the 
same manner that we could for a denial of the 
laws of logic. We have here vividly impressed 
upon us what earlier in our discussion we 
found it difficult to believe, namely, that a 
God-expression which we can see and touch 
presents difficulties for belief, that the most 
ineffable idea of Him does not. We thought 
we wanted a God who would appeal to us 
through a sense - experience ; finally one is 
given to us, and we are more troubled than be- 
fore. No one was more conscious of this than 
Christ. He said Himself, " A prophet is with- 
out honor in his own country " ; and since 
God by His very human expression has become 
in a certain sense one of our countrymen, we 
find the same difficulty in accepting Him that 
was found by His own neighbors. The records 
may be incorrect, perhaps He did not make 
these assertions about Himself , — certain words 
have been interpolated by His followers ; 
He was not mad Himself, but His followers 
were misguided, undeveloped, too anxious to 
found a new creed, et cetera^ and what we 
really have left is only the record of another 
good man too highly prized by certain con- 



124 THE RIGHT TO BELIEVE 

temporaries, as He was too little prized by 
others. 

All this is the weakness to which any his- 
torical record is liable^ and we must base our 
belief, not on the reliability of this or that 
manuscript, on the latest reading of this or 
that clause, but on the supreme reasonable- 
ness of the character as presented, and the 
question whether a nature of this quality could 
have been invented by any one, much less by 
the humble followers with whom Christ began 
His ministry. If we decide that this nature is 
too great for human contrivance, that it really 
must have existed, no matter whether one man 
or another wrote the texts ; if the character 
as pictured is a harmonious whole as it stands, 
and if this whole has a certain quality too 
great for other authors, we shall say God was 
its author, as Christ said of Himself. I think 
the criterion of the whole matter is. Do 
we actually think Christ's nature as pre- 
sented, is very wonderful ? Do we find it fits 
in so well with our conception of God that it 
is positively easier for us to believe His asser- 
tions as they stand, than to question their 
authenticity? Ease of one alternative or the 
other is after all our usual guide. The sun 



THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST 125 

apparently moves around the earth, and that 
visible course seems to some minds a more 
conclusive argument for such a path than any- 
thing we can say to the contrary. We, on the 
other hand, have so many correlated facts for 
the other hypothesis, that it is easier to deny 
the evidence of our eyes than to deny these 
facts. The difference between the two sides 
is that one puts a higher valuation on one line 
of evidence than the other. All of us have 
certain demands that must be satisfied in any 
argument, and we should prefer to call a 
matter unexplained, than to accept an expla- 
nation that left this demand unsettled. Sup- 
pose we return to the illustration of the in- 
vention. Some one finds in my possession a 
perfectly constructed flying-machine, which I 
assure him I made myself. Three comments 
are open to him : he may say, " I believe it," 
or "I don't believe it/' or ^^What of it!" 
That is, either he accepts it, or he does not 
accept it, or he is indifferent to the whole 
matter. If he does not think it very extraor- 
dinary, he may believe that I was the con- 
structor. But in proportion as he realizes its 
remarkable perfection, and in proportion as 
he knows me, he will become more and more 



126 THE RIGHT TO BELIEVE 

incredulous, and he will end by saying that it 
is evident that some one who knows more of 
mechanics than I do must have been its cre- 
ator. But I assure him that I must have done 
it. Any one can tell him that no one else has 
been on the premises ; it is not so remarkable 
as to be outside my powers, and I may be 
even deluded into believing what I say. But 
if he is sufficiently convinced that the machine 
is a wonderful one, he will answer, " I do not 
know who made it ; its presence here is mys- 
terious, and you think you are telling the 
truth. But I know you too well. You are 
absolutely incapable of making a flying-ma- 
chine, and it is easier for me to believe that 
it came from any other source in the world, 
than that you were the inventor or the con- 
structor.'' 

It is always open to a man to be unim- 
pressed with anything, however unusual it 
may be. A man has the right to blink indiffer- 
ently at a whole galaxy of flying-machines 
careering through the landscape, and refuse 
to consider the matter worth a second look ; 
but we at least are not of this class. Either 
we are so struck with the sublimity of Christ's 
character, and His absolute satisfactoriness as 



THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST 127 

a revelation of God's nature, that to believe 
in Him seems easier than to credit His crea- 
tion to a few uneducated fishermen, or even 
to a great theologian ; or we are not so 
impressed, in which case the latter possibility 
seems more reasonable. 

Now, provided that we can detect no flaw in 
Christ's character, and that we cannot suggest 
any virtue or mark of nobility which we would 
add to make it our ideal, we must admit that it 
is not alone that we are not impressed with 
Christ's goodness, but that we are not impressed 
very mightily with goodness in general ! Un- 
less we can imagine something higher that we 
want, we must confess that this is the highest, 
but that the highest is no great matter after 
all. If we say this, we are striking our blow at 
God's character, and not alone at Christ's ; and 
this is a very serious dilemma into which we 
have allowed ourselves to drift. A thing must 
be the best if it is all that we can conceivably 
want; and if we have the best and do not 
want it, we are like aliens who have wan- 
dered into Paradise, and find it not to their 
taste. 

There was a parable spoken once about the 
lord of a vineyard who sent messengers to 



128 THE RIGHT TO BELIEVE 

inspect his domain and collect the fruit of 
it. The messengers were badly treated^ and he 
said^ " I will send my son ! surely they will 
reverence him." They did not reverence the 
son, and why not? Because they did not 
reverence the father. 

The case would have been different if they 
had reverenced the father, and yet had doubted 
whether this messenger were the son as he 
announced himself to be. They would have 
respected any one from the lord of the vine- 
yard, whether he were his son or not; and 
though the son would have regretted their 
doubt of him, yet if their love for his father 
were great, he would not have been too hard 
on their disrespect. Since the Son of Man 
appeared in a world of time and sense, and 
since religion must not depend on such an 
expression. He acknowledges that the convic- 
tion of God is the most essential. A knowledge 
of Christ depends on historical information. If 
that were all-important, the uninformed, the 
misinformed, and those who were born too 
soon, would be irretrievably robbed of the 
necessity of their souls, and surely that could 
not be just. But even if the unbelieving 
workers in the vineyard who still loved the 



THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST 129 

lord were to be forgiven for their doubt, were 
they losing anything by it ? 

Was Christ's coming simply another revela- 
tion, or a different one? Is there a progression 
in God's expression of Himself, so that if one 
loses the last, one loses not only a part, but 
the greatest ? Moreover, is there a satisfaction 
to be derived from a religion with Christ in 
it, that one cannot find in a religion without 
Him ? To this latter question at least there 
can hardly be two answers. The Christian 
religion has stood for a joyous view of life, a 
serenity of disposition, as no other creed has 
ever done. The Jewish religion, from which it 
sprang, was dignified, noble, and possessed of 
a high imaginative fire which the Christian 
also appropriates to himself. But its greatest 
teachers were always looking forward with a 
passionate eagerness to the fuller revelation 
that was to be. Their God was just and terrible. 
His vengeance on their sins was more real 
than His love, and there was a division of 
feeling among themselves as to immortality. 
Their ideal of righteousness was stern, lofty, 
and unattainable ; but that the sorrowful man 
should be comforted, or the solitary man find 
a friend in God, hardly crossed their minds. 



130 THE RIGHT TO BELIEVE 

They needed comfort and companionship as 
much as any other men, but when, hke Job, 
they lifted up their voices to ask why the 
world should be as it is, they were too over- 
come by the inscrutability of Jehovah to hope 
to find an answer. Can we not imagine God 
as saying, " Can they not see what I am ? 
Can they not read my tenderness as well as 
my anger?" And to answer the eternal ques- 
tion for whose answer the best men of all 
ages had been searching, Jehovah humbled 
Himself, to show them that the important 
element of His nature was not His power, 
which men could not achieve, but His good- 
ness, which they might. 

It is nothing against His revelation, that 
other men had had visions of the same ideal. 
In fact, there seems a special fitness that it 
should have come to pass after the mighty 
Jewish prophets and those Greek giants of 
thought had done their best but had missed 
the whole. No one who reads of the lives of 
Plato and Socrates, their noble ideals, their 
glimpses of a divine love, can fail to be struck 
with their nearness to the Christian religion. 
Far from weakening the Christian message 
when it comes, it is an added support to it 



THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST 131 

that the highest strivings of the human mind 
all pointed in one direction, and that Christ 
came not to destroy but to fulfill. Who would 
believe in a religion that ran counter to the 
ideals of all good men who had lived before, 
and what more could a God do than quietly 
to set His seal upon the best, and live it 
before our eyes ? 

Man had hoped before that God understood 
him, he had wondered if He did, and now he 
finds that it is an assured fact. If there is to 
be an assurance of God's absolute understand- 
ing of every man, He must have experienced 
triumphantly all that a man must face. He 
must be poor, for most men are poor ; He must 
live an obscure life with no striking opportu- 
nities, for most men live such a life. He must 
be unappreciated and misunderstood. He must 
suffer as only a few men are called upon to 
suffer, and He must even pass through that 
horror which perhaps all men with a great 
mission have faced, when they have almost 
doubted themselves and have called out as 
Christ did, " My God, why hast Thou forsaken 
me ? " Some men are burdened with such a 
tem^perament that they cannot see God clearly, 
no matter how they try; and even they have 



132 THE RIGHT TO BELIEVE 

a sympathizer in Christ, who passed through 
the same darkness. 

Is it possible that there exists any one who 
would not be comforted to feel that the God 
of the whole earth knew as a man knows, his 
sorrow over the death of a friend, his discour- 
agement over unappreciated work, his restive- 
ness in a youth of forced inactivity, his solitude 
amid men of another temper? That this is 
what men do want is shown plainly enough 
by the comfort that believers get from their 
convictions, and that it is what men wanted 
from all time, one has only to read the fifty- 
third chapter of Isaiah to see. 

To any who say, "You believe this only 
because you want to," we can answer boldly, 
" You believe the opposite because you want 
to." If they deny this, and say, " We do not 
believe the opposite because we want to, but 
because we cannot do otherwise; we would 
gladly share your richer faith, but we are un- 
able to," the matter stands differently. There 
was a time when John the Baptist, that voice 
crying in the wilderness that the Messiah had 
come, doubted the authenticity of Christ's 
mission. He had seen the divine character of 
Christ before any one else had seen it, and had 



THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST 133 

affirmed it when others doubted. He had been 
imprisoned for his passionate preaching, and 
now in the gloom of prison he sends messen- 
gers to Christ and says, " Art thou He that 
should come, or do we look for another?" 
There is perhaps not a more humanly pathetic 
touch in the whole Bible than this. The doubt 
was so plainly the result of fatigue and of 
disappointment ; or perhaps, more than all, it 
was the reaction that comes to every intense 
nature after declaring itself ; the tendency to 
doubt what it has most vehemently believed. 
The situation is so natural, so human, and the 
nobility of both characters is so touching. 
John doubted the reality of Christ's mission, 
and whom did he ask to dissipate his doubt, 
but Christ Himself? He knew no other way 
to turn for an answer. And Christ understood 
him so perfectly that He entered into no dis- 
cussion of the matter. He sent word to the 
prisoner that the same works were being per- 
formed, it was all just as it was before, only 
he in prison had forgotten it. Who of us be- 
lieves that John was not reassured? Who of 
us believes that real faith depends on the ups 
and downs of emotional buoyancy? 

The feeling of certainty is a detachable one. 



134 THE RIGHT TO BELIEVE 

Some of us are without it altogether, and, 
though we might stake our lives on an issue, 
would never feel certain of it ; while others of 
us always feel certain of one thing or its op- 
posite, even where our reason tells us we have 
no right to do so. We cannot all feel certainty 
to the same degree, and we must not demand 
it of ourselves. But any man, no matter how 
unfortunate his emotional endowment, if he 
persistently asked Christ for the removal of 
his doubt, as John did, while he might never 
attain the triumphant faith which is given to 
more sanguine minds, might feel that by this 
very lack he was entering more deeply into 
the greatest of human experiences, — that long- 
ing which hopes where it sees nothing. Per- 
haps he has a deeper vision of Christ's own 
sorrow, and by his own blindness understands 
Christ's last agony, better than we. 

Does this make God too common? If He 
has been human, and has lived on earth in 
complete control of one nature, instead of in 
fragmentary control of our several ones, do 
we find our Ideal of a great God has suffered ? 
I think not. It is noticeable in every-day life, 
that the nobler the character, the simpler it 
becomes ; and its simplicity, far from detract- 



THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST 135 

ing from its grandeur, accents it. We are 
embarrassed by the chief of police, and we 
quail before a " sales-lady," but we are at home 
immediately with a great man. That such a 
man dresses as other men do, that he eats and 
sleeps, we sometimes think would shock us, 
would make him seem too small ; but in reality 
it does nothing of the kind. Clothes, even 
mean clothes, cannot belittle a great spirit; 
they rather take on a certain grandeur from 
the form which carries them. 

If we are disturbed by such simplicity, if 
we are more impressed by strangeness and 
a wild eye, by an ermine robe or a prancing 
steed, it bespeaks our own littleness. Christ 
Himself asked the same question of those who 
were apparently startled by His normality; 
" What went ye out for to see ? A reed shaken 
by the wind, or a man clothed in soft rai- 
ment ? '' And elsewhere He comments on such 
people, and says how impossible they were to 
satisfy. They, like some of us, were offended 
when a man deported himself like John, and 
in the vehemence of his enthusiasm laid him- 
self open to the charge of madness. And 
again, when one lived simply and normally 
with his fellow men, as did Christ, they found 



136 THE RIGHT TO BELIEVE 

Him too natural for their taste. They, like 
some of us, did not know what they wanted, 
and were afraid that neither normahty nor 
abnormality befitted God's expression. Since, 
however, most men, from the very nature of 
the word, are normal, Christ must be so too, 
in every respect but the unprecedented >char- 
acter of His Spirit. 

He Himself put no great emphasis on His 
miracles. He told His disciples that they would 
work greater wonders than He had done, and 
He admitted that the Pharisees and their 
children cast out devils as well as He. Certain 
wonder works had been common through all 
history, — sometimes performed by good men, 
and sometimes by bad. Aaron cast his rod 
before Pharaoh and it became a serpent; 
Pharaoh's magicians did as much, and we can 
hardly blame the monarch that he was not 
impressed. Sometimes a prophet performed 
a mighty deed, and sometimes a witch. The 
situation is in nowise different to-day, and we 
are quite right when we refuse to accept an 
unusual power of this kind as a divine mani- 
festation. Christ placed no more emphasis upon 
such phenomena than any man need do to-day. 
He never called them miracles, in the sense 



THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST 137 

that they transcended any natural law; and 
no one is obliged to^ or indeed should have any 
disposition so to do. If one does^ in fact^ it 
seems to put an emphasis upon them which 
they do not deserve, and diverts the attention 
from the more important traits of His charac- 
ter. It obliges us to consider as divine mes- 
sengers all who perform the same acts, instead 
of seeing God in those who reflect His charac- 
ter. We should be in sorry case if all who 
healed the sick, noble as that calling may be, 
must be accepted as nearer the Deity than 
those who do not. 

It is sometimes urged that Christ called 
Himself the Son of Man more than He did the 
Son of God, and that He meant thereby that 
His nature must not be over-rated. But it 
seems rather to point in the other direction. 
Why should any human being emphasize the 
fact that he is a son of man ? What else 
should he be ? Surely nothing could be more 
meaningless than that a man, who is obviously 
a son of man, should say so. The only point 
in such reiteration of His kinship with man is 
that He felt His kinship with God as so much 
more striking, more apparent, that if anything 
were likely to be forgotten, it would be His 



138 THE RIGHT TO BELIEVE 

human nature. His mission was not to impress 
man over again, that God was God, and that 
man was man. That the world knew already. 
His message was that God could be a man, 
and that men might be divine. He came to 
tell us not so much that He was the Son o£ 
God as that we are sons of God, and for that 
reason He calls Himself the Son of Man and 
us the sons of God. 

Does not this assertion carry many other 
things with it ? Can we even ask whether we 
are immortal or not, after such a revelation ? 
Has God gone through this long period of 
development to make us, only to lose us 
again ? Can any nature that has linked itself 
with the Divine be lost, unless God Himself is 
finite? As to the immortality of those who 
have lost connection with Divinity what shall 
we say ? Do they want immortality, or do 
they prefer to be without it ? Here is a field 
into which I cannot enter from lack of testi- 
mony. In my experience, just so far as people 
have been irreligious they have not been 
interested in their own eternal Nature. An 
existence of the sort they have at present, 
they could not have, and do not want. Neither 
does existence of any other kind, with or with- 



THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST 139 

out a God, appeal to them. Whether such a 
state of miud can eventually effect its own 
suicide, its own annihilation, who shall say ? 
Logically, if a man may have faith, other 
things being equal, in what he hopes for, we 
may leave such a possibility to those who so 
hope. 

To those whose imaginations are fascinated 
and tormented by the thought of other worlds 
and systems extending to the farthest fixed 
star and beyond, the conviction that the God 
of them all lived thirty-three years of His 
eternity on this dust that we call our earth, is 
an awful but an unspeakable comfort. Only 
thus can they face the universe with courage. 



THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 

It Tvill seem an astonishing statement to 
those whose minds are burdened with the 
misery of this world, with its crime, its inno- 
cent suffering, and sudden death, to say that 
after all we have what we want I Thev will 
protest, " We do not want the innocent to 
suffer, we do not want man to sin, we do not 
want to die," and we can only answer as em- 
phatically, " Yes, you do." 

This may seem little less than madness, but 
we must carefully analyze this situation as we 
have the others. We must picture our world 
without punishment falling on innocent as 
well as g'uilty, without the possibility of sin, 
and without death, and see if such a world 
is one in which we should care to live. Our 
view must be a broad one. It is not a case for 
complaining of individual instances. We can- 
not point to this case where a child was 
injured by a drunken father, or to that where 
an only son was killed in war, or to another 
where a moral weakness has been discovered 



THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 141 

in a man hitherto supposed upright. We must 
investigate principles instead. If we refuse to 
admit these injustices and weaknesses as har- 
monizing with an idea of a just God, do we 
mean by that, that parents should not have 
any real responsibility over their children, and 
that society should not have the capacity to 
kill its members, or to over-tempt them, if 
society so chooses? That society does so 
choose and so act is an evidence that the 
world in general is getting what it wants, 
granted that some of its own by-products are 
bitter even to itself. 

If we admit, then, that the world in gen- 
eral is suited with its lot (otherwise it would 
change it in certain important respects), is it 
possible for the individual in such a world 
ever to be happy ? Is there any connection 
whatever between the individual and the over- 
individual will of society ? Must we all partake 
of one another's desires and achievements, 
of one another's virtues, and one another's 
sins? 

It would certainly seem that there is such a 
connection, and that the world was planned 
to run on the basis of each personality forget- 
ting itself in the greater whole. Because we 



142 THE RIGHT TO BELIEVE 

do not so forget ourselves^ and because we 
insist instead on a certain separateness instead 
of brotherhood, result all the hitches, the 
differences, the disasters Avhich we deplore. 
Yet here as always we are illogical. If we 
really want this isolated personality, why do 
we regret its normal consequence ? If we do 
not want this isolation, but a community of 
interest with other natures as well as with our 
own, why do we not live it ? That some of us 
do and some of us do not, illustrates the con- 
fusion that always results when a house is 
divided against itself. 

It may seem at first as if we were con- 
tradicting what we have already said about 
personality. We have been insisting that we 
were created that we might each of us be a 
separate addition to the world. Each of us is 
being trained to be a companion of God, and 
as such we are not God, and we are not 
each other, but always very definitely ourselves. 
But this truth like many others has expanded 
under our scrutiny, and we are forced to ask 
the question, " Am I really most myself when 
I am most conscious of it ? Am I not really 
more of a person when I have apparently lost 
my identity altogether in a cause, or in an 



THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 143 

experience of aesthetic ecstasy^ or in religious 
communion ? Is Self-Consciousness desirable, 
or is it to be gained only to forget ? " We can 
illustrate this question and its answer, entirely 
within the limits of a single person's experi- 
ence. To begin with, we all have had difficulty 
in learning to manage our own body. We 
could not walk without thinking, " now this 
leg and this arm so, now balance until the 
others can be brought into position.' ' We 
learned our language in the same way, and 
every time we study a new one we go through 
the same painful process : " I must sound gut- 
turals so, and this must be nasal and that 
must be sibilant" ; and all our muscles and 
ideas are as separate as possible, only to be 
forced into harness with the greatest difficulty. 
When we are learning more complex affairs, 
the separation of our organism is even more 
apparent. To play this piece on the piano re- 
quires a right hand in one melody, and with 
a three-beat rhythm, a left hand in another 
melody with a two-beat rhythm; one foot stays 
on the loud pedal for periods in no way 
related to either rhythm, or to the left foot, 
which presses the soft pedal with discretion. 
As if this were not enough, one melody must 



144 THE RIGHT TO BELIEVE 

sometimes come to the front and then the 
other ; your fourth finger cannot bring out as 
much tone as your thirds and must be forced 
to, and your httle finger must diverge from 
your thumb enough to reach to or surpass an 
octave. You might feel after such an exercise 
of your powers, " Now I am really a man ! 
I can have hand, arm, finger, foot, melody, 
rhythm-consciousness all at once." Each of 
these organs or ideas might plume itself on 
living unto itself, and the thumb for instance 
rejoice that it was as consciously a factor in 
the process as the melody, or the emotion, 
which the whole piece expressed. The fact of 
the matter is, of course, that this period of the 
separateness of all the component parts of the 
playing process is very fatiguing and unsatis- 
factory, and until a person has got beyond 
it, and has felt the emotion but forgotten 
his thumb, he can hardly be said to play the 
piano. Or, if we could impersonate this little 
member, we might say to it, ^^It is all very 
well for you to think of yourself, and say 
you are as important a part of the piece as 
anything else. So you are ; but until you for- 
get it, and let the player forget it, there is not 
any piece at all ! '' 



THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 145 

Even the performer may be a little bewil- 
dered at the discovery that when he was the 
most conscious of himself in all his members 
he was a failure^ and no person at all, and 
only when he forgot that he was any one and 
lost himself in his interest, did he find that he 
was an artist, — but such is the case. The real 
personality in any situation is the man who 
forgets that he is one, as much as is consistent 
with other men doing the same. And our re- 
spect for his character dwindles if we realize 
more and more that a studied self-conscious- 
ness directs all his activities. 

We must admit, then, that even within the 
individual character, the different activities, 
while they are acquired as separate affairs 
become useful only as they lose that separate 
identity, and allow themselves to be forgotten. 
And, moreover, the combination of them all 
which makes up what we call our separate per- 
sonality, only comes to its fullest realization 
when it can lose itself in an interest, or if it 
does not possess such a capacity in every direc- 
tion, it is only really strong and powerful in the 
lines where it can so do. If I have not got be- 
yond the separate foot and finger stage at the 
piano, yet can swim with no thought beside 



146 THE RIGHT TO BELIEVE 

the idea of the boat I am heading for^ then 
I am a swimmer, but I am no player. If when 
I say a prayer I am conscious of a great 
many disconnected ideas, that I am in an un- 
comfortable position, and that I wonder why 
I am doing it, whereas it is enough simply to 
hear dance-music at a party, to go through 
the necessary movements, then I am a dancer, 
but I cannot pray. Where I am so conscious 
of the details of technique that each one 
stands by itself, I am not as yet a success ; 
but where I have mastered the technique 
enough to forget it, I am a master. 

All that we have said about the relation of 
a person to his work or to his art must be said 
with equal emphasis about persons in their 
relations to one another. If we all of us continue 
to feel that we are separate affairs (for we 
must begin this way, just as each muscle must 
acquire its own local sign), and if we do not 
lose our own separate entity in the life of the 
whole, we are not artists at living. This sep- 
arateness of aim makes trouble in the world, 
because society at large is made, just as each 
bodily organism is made, that the whole should 
work together, and that only in so doing 
should it live a complete life. Continual 



THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 147 

thought on one detail of the whole social 
person makes a hitch in proceedings, just as 
the thought, ^^How are my lips moving as I 
talk?" will dampen the spirits of any conver- 
sationalist, no matter how well his lips may 
function if let alone. Moreover, this life of 
common personality is not forced upon us. 
We like it. The hardest thing for most people 
to bear is complete isolation. They would 
rather be over-worked, be too important to 
their family and neighborhood, than feel that 
their opinion is of no consequence to any one, 
and that they can neither help nor hinder, 
nor be so influenced themselves, by any one in 
the world. 

If the matter had been laid before us, at 
the creation of the world, how should we have 
answered the following questions? Shall we 
allow one man to influence another man by 
speech, by action, by physical heredity? Shall 
we allow one to influence another for evil as 
well as for good ? Shall we make the conse- 
quences of sin always fall in exact measure 
on the head of the criminal and on no one 
else ? Shall we always visit the consequences 
of sin on the man himself, within a given time, 
so that all the world may learn from his ex- 



148 THE RIGHT TO BELIEVE 

ample ? How soon shall retribution take place ? 
What visitation would you suggest that shall 
affect no one but the criminal ? Shall ignorance 
be punished as summarily as sin ? If not, how 
shall it be treated? Shall ignorance prosper 
as well as wisdom? How far-reaching shall 
the effects of both sin and ignorance be ? If 
they do not stop with the man himself, shall 
they affect his family, his country, his age, or 
shall their limits be undefined ? Shall human 
beings always remain on the earth, or shall 
they die? If they do not die, shall they remain 
young, or middle-aged, or old ? What activi- 
ties will engross them on earth for an eternity ? 
If, on the other hand, they die, shall it be 
always at a given age, or can other men in- 
fluence this date, and hasten or retard it? 
Will it be kinder, if they do not want to live 
forever on such an earth as has been given 
them, to soften their regret at leaving it? 
Would it not be better to make men want to 
die, and make their friends face their departure 
with composure? Would it not make life 
easier if the after life were no mystery, but 
any man knew his future as well as his past ? 
Why keep men in a world they do not enjoy, 
by a fear of the next world, whose essence 



THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 149 

they do not know? Such are a few o£ the 
questions that might have been put to us, and 
which in fact are now put to us, and which we 
must consider for a little. If we find that our 
solutions of the difficulty are no way different 
from those already existent in the world, we 
must decide that we have already what we 
want. If we, on the other hand, will have 
something altered, we must specify how it is 
to be changed. 

In any given evil situation we can feel the 
tragedy and the sorrow of it ; but should we 
want it changed in principle ? Should we want 
human beings unable to choose the wrong 
because of any other force than their own good 
habits ? Should we prefer total impassivity to 
our real grief? And do we really want not to 
die ? Perhaps nothing would bring the matter 
more vividly before us than to imagine con- 
ditions the reverse of those already obtaining 
in the world. 

Let us then protest at once. The guilty 
alone shall suffer for their evil deeds, and the 
innocent shall start with a clean page. Each 
man shall have a just punishment in the na- 
ture of things, and not suffer as much for an 
impulsive moment as another man does for 



150 THE RIGHT TO BELIEVE 

long contemplated crime. Ignorance shall not 
meet the same fate as sin, and man shall not 
die. If he does, it shall simply be at the nat- 
ural end of his life and without loss of powers, 
only with a loss of the will to live. All this is 
a legitimate wish if we really want it ; but if 
we choose such a course of things we must 
face all its consequences. 

This demand springs at bottom from the 
desire that men should be separate individuals, 
and not be of a common family. It arises 
from the protest against one person's having 
a better chance than another ; against a child's 
being burdened with the frailties of his father 
or of his society ; against a man at one corner 
of the earth suffering because of the deficiencies 
of another man at an opposite corner. " Why 
should I be deprived of the use of my arm, 
because a drunken conductor ran my car off the 
track ? Why should I be an invalid because of 
my great-grandfather's mistakes ? Why should 
a burglar have the power to shoot my son ? " 
It is natural enough to say in our heat that 
the conductor, the great-grandfather, and the 
burglar should have the capacity to kill them- 
selves but not us, that in the nature of things 
it ought to be impossible for their lives to hurt 



THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 151 

ours. But implying, as this does, an isolation 
of individual influence to one's own person 
alone, do we really mean what we say ? Sup- 
pose that what we say we want, is actually 
the case. The constitution of things has been 
altered to suit us, and all is the reverse of 
what it was. At first we feel a great freedom 
from responsibility. It is glorious to know that 
I have no obligations to any one, nor any one 
to me, and there is a certainty about results 
which was never possible in the old way. I 
know in every decision that my goodness will 
be appreciated by a waiting world at its exact 
worth, and since my punishment is my own 
business, I need refrain from nothing because 
of its possible effect on my friends, my children, 
my contemporaries, or posterity. They will 
start free, exactly as if I had not existed at 
all. I am an isolated unit, wholly sufficient or 
deficient unto myself, with a clean slate, on 
which no one can make a mark but myself. 

As it is in the world at present, while we 
feel that virtue gets its reward in the individual 
conscience by its sense of duty done, we know 
that it is not always adequately recognized and 
applauded by the public. There is some hesi- 
tation, when embarking in a new enterprise, 



152 THE RIGHT TO BELIEVE 

as to whether it will be understood^ whether 
our motives will be considered pure^ and^ in 
fact^ whether it will turn out to be the best 
thing after all. But in this new scheme there 
will be not the slightest difficulty in dividing 
the sheep from the goats. If a man is unhappy, 
we need not sympathize with him, for he is 
getting what he expected, and what he chose 
with his eyes open. And the virtuous are not 
to be commended, for they are getting the 
best of the bargain, and are being amply re- 
warded for any inconvenience it may have 
cost them. Indeed, he is only a fool who 
chooses to sin, when prosperity and good 
health attend him on his virtuous path. 

This conception of the nature of things is 
not a new one in history. The old Jewish 
notion was rather frankly based on the profit 
and loss aspect of the godly life. The righteous 
man spread himself like a green bay tree, and 
the wicked man was caught in his own net. 
Moreover, from any point of view, the right- 
eous life has been found to pay in the long 
run, from the peace it brings the soul, and the 
respect from the most high-minded portion of 
society. But it has not always paid, in the 
sense that it has brought health, an easy life, 



THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 153 

or the appreciation of the majority. On the 
contrary, it has more often than otherwise led 
to a serious sacrifice of pleasure, ambition, 
and even of life. This is the risk that the 
righteous man has had to run. It has been 
something of a leap in the dark, where the 
reward has become a less and less prominent 
part of the consideration, as the nature was 
noble and the situation a serious one. These 
two changes in the nature of things — certain 
reward and punishment for the innocent and 
guilty respectively, and the impossibility of 
evil (and therefore of good) influence — would 
assuredly alter our attitude to many situations, 
and with its greater justice bring a lack of 
savor to certain virtues. 

For instance, there has been a satisfaction in 
the family hitherto, as the parents saw their 
children respond to the good things they had 
struggled to provide for them, even though 
they sighed to see their own shortcomings 
reproduced in their offspring. But now the 
father may be as dissipated, and the mother 
as deceitful as she chooses. They know they 
have no influence on their children, and, in 
fact, are brought up standing with the fact 
that they are not their children at all ! They 



154 THE RIGHT TO BELIEVE 

are simply children as such, with no depend- 
ence on any one for good or evil, and the 
parents, with their freedom from responsi- 
bility, have lost their parenthood. 

In business, the same freedom brings the 
same isolation. Let the railroad employees, 
the bridge - builders, the meat - packers, the 
teachers, the doctors, the chauffeurs, and the 
nursemaids be as careless as they choose. The 
engineers and the chauffeurs will kill them- 
selves, and such of their load of passengers as 
deserve it. The nursemaid may abandon her 
charges, and the doctor prescribe quack doses ; 
for surely it is not just, that an innocent baby 
should suffer lasting injury from a careless 
maid, and why should a doctor have the ca- 
pacity to poison our systems ? Whatever we 
may say nowadays about the separation of 
classes, we are in reality most manifoldly bound 
up with one another. We commit ourselves a 
hundred times a day with trusting confidence 
to our unknown brethren, from the milkman 
to the subway architects, though we know that 
they can kill us, and sometimes they do. A 
king is not safe from his valet or his cook, 
and the cook or the valet is not safe from the 
king, except as each respects the bond that 



THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 155 

unites them. Occasionally they do not respect 
it, and as the distance becomes wider and 
wider between a man and his possible victim, 
the bond has less and less strength, until most 
of us can endure with comparative ease the 
murder of our brethren if they are sufficiently 
removed from sight. In the new state of af- 
fairs, however, the milkman poisons only 
himself, and since this means that his action 
must bring pain to no innocent person, his 
family and society must have ceased to care 
anything about him. In fact, it is absolutely 
essential that all affection shall be restricted 
to the perfect man in this new regime, since 
sympathy with the unjust man in his certain 
destruction will only bring an uncalled-for 
pain upon ourselves. If my friend sins then, 
I am at once indifferent to him, for he must 
arouse no pangs in my innocent breast. 

This whole supposition demands a satiric 
treatment, which only a master of prose could 
give it. If we have sighed hitherto for the Mil- 
tonic imagination to picture divine emotions, 
we need now the irony of Swift to picture our 
world as it would be if this ideal isolated jus- 
tice obtained in it. The meaning of patriotism 
would be curiously changed if every good 



156 THE RIGHT TO BELIEVE 

soldier knew that no enemy's bullet could 
touch him, while the unworthy man, who must 
expect death, would assuredly keep away. 
Love and sympathy would be a different matter 
if they were immediately outgrown when their 
object was found unworthy, and a mother 
would face the death of her sinful child with- 
out interest or emotion. This must, of course, 
happen if a good woman is not to suffer for 
another's sin. The eye must watch the hand 
in flames without winking, and the mouth 
bear witness against the body with equanim- 
ity, for why should an eye suffer for a hand ? 
^^As it is written, an eye for an eye, and a 
tooth for a tooth." 

Swift has indeed come to our aid in his 
terrible portrayal of endless human life upon 
earth. Certainly no death and no future tor- 
ment could exceed the horror of that imagined 
survival of the earthly life, and we can hardly 
say either that he has exaggerated the facts. 
Those who have read his voyage to Laputa, 
which succeeds the famous sojourn with the 
Brobdingnags, will remember the unfortunate 
immortals, who show at birth, by the spot 
upon their temples, that death can never be 
their portion. Mr. Gulliver, upon hearing of 



THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 157 

these deathless ones^ is carried away with en- 
thusiasm over their lot, an enthusiasm which 
he observes is not shared by their countrymen. 
On closer acquaintance with them, he finds 
that their future is not one for congratulation. 
In order that the next generation shall have 
an equal chance, and one set of undying per- 
sons be not allowed to monopolize the fruits 
of the earth, they are regarded as dead by 
the law after a certain age ; indeed, their own 
exhaustion of the resources of earth interest 
makes them clamor for death as other men 
have clamored for life. 

This kind of a nightmare, of course, does 
no one any good except to give one pause, as 
it did Mr. Gulliver, who remarked, ^^From 
what I had heard and seen, my keen appetite 
for perpetuity of life was much abated. I grew 
heartily ashamed of the pleasing visions I 
had formed ; and thought no tyrant could in- 
vent a death into which I would not run with 
pleasure from such a life." 

One of Swift's critics made this comment, 
which we must admit is perfectly true : " The 
sight of such an ^immortal' would no other- 
wise arm men against the fear of death, who 
have no hope beyond it, than a man is armed 



158 THE RIGHT TO BELIEVE 

against the fear of breaking his limbs, who 
jumps out of a window when his house is on 
fire/' In other words, a choice that lies simply 
between the devil and the deep sea will not 
rouse hope in either direction, but a fear in 
both. So a man who has no hope in death 
must admit that he has none in life either, 
and the case is at least equal. We can turn 
drearily from one alternative to another, and say 
that at least one situation is no worse than the 
other, even though neither brings comfort 
with it. 

This kind of an issue is, however, not what 
we are looking for. We must accept the con- 
stitution of this world as good, unless we can 
suggest another better, but not quarrel with 
it if our modifications only bring about another 
condition just as bad. 

It may be, then, that we are willing to ad- 
mit all the foregoing supposition as reduction 
to an absurdity, but still protest that the dif- 
ficulty lies in the existence of evil at all. If 
men can sin, their children, their friends, and 
their countrymen must suffer more or less 
with them. We admit that the ties of family 
and of affection are too vital to be thrown over, 
simply to obtain the immunity from suffering 



THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 159 

possible only in such unsocial isolation as we 
have described. We will then grant that the 
burden of our ability to make the innocent 
suffer is a restraint, a bond of family tie, as 
is the responsibility that comes with it of 
passing on good gifts, as undeserved as the 
evil ones. I have to suffer for financial panics 
that are not my fault, and I enjoy national 
prosperity which is also none of my doing. 
The wisdom of this general principle perhaps 
some of us will allow, but we nevertheless con- 
tend, ^^ Why have financial panics? Why are 
men allowed to be criminally negligent so that 
their cigars set forest fires, and their flimsy 
architecture allows theatres to collapse ? " In 
other words, is this freedom to do evil any 
real freedom at all? Is it not a bondage into 
which we are born, rather than liberty, and 
should we not all be freer men, if we could 
not do evil if we would ? 

There is some truth in this, it must be ad- 
mitted at once. We are really more free with 
some voluntary restraint, or as Kant said, 
'' The good will is the only one that is free." 
Here are two men of middle age, one of them 
a slave to the habit of drink, and the other 
with years of upright living behind him. In 



160 THE RIGHT TO BELIEVE 

one sense^ is he not a slave as well as the 
other? Is not one as much in bondage to his 
good habits as the other to his bad, so that it 
would be as impossible for him to spend his 
days in the saloon as it is for the other man 
to keep out of it ? Most of us are more or less 
slaves to the non-killing habit, so that it 
would be difficult, not to say impossible, for 
us to shoot a man for his watch. Some men 
could perform this feat easily; are they not 
then more free than we? Most of us feel that 
this is leading us too far. Our incapacity to 
kill is only a fetter if we want to kill. Since 
in point of fact we do not want to, and do 
not want to want to, this background of an 
opposite habit is a support and not a drag to 
us. The reason that the drink habit is a bond- 
age, is that the man is divided against himself. 
He wants to drink, but he does not want to 
want to, and hence the will that contradicts 
itself is not free. It is the opposition of itself 
to itself that makes a will a slave, not the op- 
position of outside factors to it, hence it is 
only the good will which never contradicts 
itself. In this sense Christ in chains was a 
freer personality than the hesitating Pilate. 
Our duty is, then, to develop a greater and 



THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 161 

greater bondage to good habits. I£ we tell 
lies easily at ten years of age, at twenty it 
should be more difficult, and at fifty impos- 
sible. Our life should be spent in losing our 
liberty to do evil, just as our sense of person- 
ahty was acquired only to lose it as soon as 
possible, in the life of the whole. 

If all this is true, are we not contradicting 
what we have been affirming ever since we 
started? We have spoken of the ability to 
sin as if it were a certain patent of superiority 
of freedom. We affirmed that our right to 
reject God if we choose was the human capa- 
city that made us God-like, while here we say 
that any evil will in the course of time is 
bound to contradict itself, and is therefore not 
a free agent. Our whole system of education 
seems to be on the plan of depriving children 
of the freedom to do evil. We shield young 
children from even the knowledge of some 
sins, and certainly from all opportunity to 
commit them, thereby forcing as much alle- 
giance to the good life as possible, so that 
they may not even have the risk of choice. 
We all acknowledge that this is wise ; why 
should we not carry it further? The wonders 
of hypnotism we are only beginning to under- 



162 THE RIGHT TO BELIEVE 

stand. A man under its influence can be cured 
of many an evil habit. The physician says 
to him in hypnosis^ " When the impulse to 
take morphine begins to attack you next 
time^ you will not submit to it," and under 
the influence of this post-hypnotic suggestion, 
the patient is deprived of the will to take the 
drug and becomes in time a cured man. 

Why should not this device be employed 
with all the rising generation, before it gets 
so deep in bad habits of all kinds? We use 
good influences, why not good hypnotic sug- 
gestion? We put children under helpful 
teachers who suggest things to them in a nor- 
mal fashion, why not strain a point and have 
these suggestions so imperative in hypnosis 
that they cannot be resisted, and hence avoid 
much later suffering? 

Here again we begin to feel that we are 
driven into a position we do not care to hold. 
We realize that all the time while we are giv- 
ing suggestions and helpful environment, 
while we are keeping certain phases of life in 
the background and emphasizing others, we 
are regarding our children not wholly as per- 
sons, but as persons to be. They are not yet 
quite individual, but they are, in so far as our 



THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 163 

will chooses for them, " things " which shall 
some day be men. After a certain amount of 
modeling in the hands of the potter, they are 
sent forth with a dower of memories, of use- 
ful habits and tendencies, and told to fend for 
themselves. These good habits do not make 
them slaves, for we see all too often how eas- 
ily they are outgrown, but they merely help 
the will to an equal chance. There are so 
many attractions dragging a life in all direc- 
tions, that for a will to hold a single course of 
goodness among various paths of contradic- 
tion, it must have some help to make the game 
an even one. Nevertheless, after we are ma- 
ture, we feel that it is better for us to have 
our choice even at the risk of having our fin- 
gers scorched, than to live forever in safety 
under the guidance of some one else. 

The situation, then, seems to be this. The 
freedom to do evil must be a real one, in that 
a man is prevented from doing it only by 
himself. The more he makes the evil impos- 
sible for himself by his own choice, by his 
deliberate habits, by the position in society 
where he chooses to put himself, the more — 
not the less — he becomes free, because his 
will is still attaining what it wants. Whatever 



164 THE RIGHT TO BELIEVE 

bondage to the good he puts himself under is 
not bondage^ but freedom^ yet he must have 
had the chance to choose the other slavery 
which really deserves its name. Just as the 
essence of the divine in us is our capacity to 
assert our God-head or deny it, so the essence 
of our will is that it can choose its free path, 
or can choose to deprive itself of all free- 
dom by bondage to the evil. We can even 
choose to keep out of reach of certain temp- 
tations, and by so doing (other things being 
equal) we have overcome them, for there is 
no virtue in the mere expenditure of energy 
in struggle. But we now see that no matter 
how much we deplore the evil wills in the 
world, — the wills that frustrate themselves as 
well as us, and bring desolation with them, — 
nevertheless, we prefer to live in a world of 
men who have had their chance. It remains 
for us to lock them up and treat them as dan- 
gerous things, if they become insupportable, 
or more important still, to treat them as pre- 
cious things a little longer and more thor- 
oughly in their youth, so that they start their 
real life with a better equipment. That we do 
not so care for our weaker brethren shows 
that we are not so much concerned over the 



THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 165 

evil in the world as we pretend to be in our 
quiet moments. 

All that we have said in this chapter about 
the will proves of course nothing about its 
final essence. Whether we are in the last anal- 
ysis anything more than moving machines can- 
not be proved^ because there is no possible 
system of proof that will convince an impar- 
tial mind one way or the other. If we are 
only automatons^ we must give up such a God 
as we have described, or indeed any God who 
can demand anything whatever of us. We 
must also give up our notion of real virtue or 
sin or blame. In short, our whole conception 
of personality goes with it, and so far as log- 
ical proof is concerned, this is all as possible 
as the reverse. But if we have chosen to walk 
the path along which our hope rather than 
our dread leads us, this mechanical point of 
view is forever impossible. 

We have found that our Eden can never be 
complete without a tree of forbidden fruit in 
its midst. Happy are we if we choose not to 
eat of it. Society is the more content if we 
nibble only the more inconspicuous apples, 
though for our own souls it does not much 
matter which one we pick, if we taste at all. 



166 THE EIGHT TO BELIEVE 

Our spiritual health depends in its weakest 
stages on our not willing even the evil we may 
icant^ but we are hardly robust until what we 
will and what we want have come into har- 
mony. The path of virtue leads at last to this 
harmony of will desire, even though on the 
way the will is sometimes divided against it- 
self ; whereas the evil will must eventually con- 
tradict itself, no matter how deceptively har- 
monious it is at first. 

We shall not go into any ethical theories 
here. Our only effort has been to convince 
some of our counsel for the complaint, that if 
the evil world is all the charge they have 
against the Creator, they must withdraw their 
suit. They must admit that they really have 
in principle what they want, however badly 
the details work themselves out through their 
own misuse of freedom. 

As we look over our questions with which 
we began the discussion we find ourselves say- 
ing, " We are all brothers, and bound up with 
one another. We prefer to be persons, though 
that allows us to deny our will, our God, and 
our brotherhood, if we choose. We must in- 
fluence one another infinitely, though that 
implies that evil shall be passed on as well as 



THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 167 

good, and that the innocent and the unworthy 
will get both more and less than they deserve." 
Ignorance must not prosper, and virtue must 
not seek its ideal because o£ certain reward. 
We do not care to live here forever. All 
friends cannot die at once, leaving no rup- 
tured ties, and those who are left do not 
want to give up their grief for anything less 
than an infinite faith. A complete knowledge 
of where they or we are going would not 
help us, except as we have a right to believe 
we shall be safe with a good God. Sensation 
contact with them, although we miss it, is not 
what we really desire, any more than we wish 
such contact with God. We want to be actu- 
ally with them, with no reservations, and we 
hope that we shall be, — therefore we believe. 
We have a dread of death, but we want this 
very dread. Without it, the temptation to die 
would be too hard to fight, and we should 
leave our work unfinished. We find ourselves, 
after all the efforts of our imagination, in just 
such a world as we have always lived in ! 
We began with this : — 

Oh Love, could you and I with Him conspire 
To grasp this sorry scheme of things entire, 
Would we not shatter it to bits — and then 
Ee-mould it nearer to the Heart's desire ? 



168 THE RIGHT TO BELIEVE 

But we find upon thinking out each opposite 
possibihty to its conclusion, that we have our 
heart's desire already ! It is the individual case 
which we deplore, and not the principle. We 
have chosen the law ourselves, but we are 
unstable enough to quarrel with its natural 
outcome. This clash of will is also human, 
therefore we love it ! We would not be such 
fatalists as to sink into a nerveless apathy, or 
such pessimists as to have no choice but to 
curse God and die. Nor indeed would we be 
possessed of a philosophic calm, which could 
be moved by neither indignation nor pity. 

We are human, therefore we struggle, but 
there is enough of the divine in all of us to 
look upon creation as a whole and say, " Be- 
hold, it is very good." 



VI 

PRAYER 

We are now out o£ the woods o£ theory, in 
the open field of experimental facts. There is 
no need to begin on a philosophy of prayer, 
because by our definition of God we know 
that prayer is not only natural but necessary, 
and the relation of all others that the Creator 
would have established between Himself and 
His children. The question is now rather, 
^^How does one pray ?" If we had not already 
defined the kind of God we choose to believe 
in, we should have a right to ask such ques- 
tions as these: ^^Is it reasonable to pray? Is 
there a God to hear, and is it possible for Him 
to answer? " but coming as far as we already 
have, these questions have answered them- 
selves. We accept the possibility of prayer 
and of answer on exactly the same basis as 
that on which we have believed in our God. 
We believe in the efficacy of prayer because 
we must either believe in it or its opposite, 
and the hoped-for alternative is always our 
choice. 



170 THE RIGHT TO BELIEVE 

The question before us is therefore a differ- 
ent one. We want no theories nor assump- 
tions^ but experimental testimony as to how 
one actually prays ; and although the question 
might seem easier to answer than some queries 
we have already advanced^ this is by no means 
the ease. 

If we were ashed what we meant by prayer, 
most of us would give an answer like the fol- 
lowing : " It is the addressing of petitions to a 
Being whom we do not see, but whom we be- 
lieve to exist." Most of us, at some time of 
our life at least, have prayed ; that is, we 
have addressed petitions in thought or words 
to such a supposed Being ; and yet many of 
us feel, at the same time, that in spite of this 
exercise we have never really prayed. We feel 
that it did not amount to anything, that no 
results came from it, and we have either out- 
grown the habit, or continue to indulge in 
pubhc or private prayer only because it seems 
somehow the thing to do. Although most peo- 
ple feel a certain sentimental attachment to 
the practice of prayer, — children should be 
taught it, a devout old lady is more attractive 
than the reverse, — there is certainly a wide 
discontinuance of its exercise in any serious 



PRAYER 171 

and regular way, and I believe this is largely 
due, with would-be religious people, to the 
fact that they actually do not know its tech- 
nique. It can be said in a certain sense that 
all the world prays, but in another that prayer 
is an art attained by very few. 

We all of us know what we mean when we 
say pole-vaulting, or singing operatic music, 
or driving a four-in-hand, but how many of 
us can do these things, and do them well? 
Some of us try spasmodically to do all of them, 
but we seldom get so that their performance 
is easy or satisfactory, and as we grow older, 
we give up the struggle. While we admire the 
feats performed by those who have been more 
persistent, we confess that such attainments are 
not for us. Now these exercises need training, 
they are the result of delicate adjustment and of 
long patience, and there are few artists in these 
or any other callings. Prayer is an exercise, on 
the religious side, an intercourse with one's 
God, but on the mental side an exercise which 
is sometimes difficult and often fatiguing, 
and can no more be learned to perfection 
in a few trials than can the arts of lesser sig- 
nificance. It is all very well to say, and it is 
in a sense true, that any man can pray if he 



172 THE RIGHT TO BELIEVE 

only will. His desire is the main thing, and 
the performance is of less account. But every 
man who begins to pray after long disuse of 
the practice, knows very well that he cannot 
pray as he wishes to. He either has never had 
the art, or he has lost it, and while he derives 
some comfort from the little he is able to re- 
gain, he will not know how to pray until he 
has learned the art over again. 

There has been much scientific interest of 
late years on all sides in the matters of reli- 
gion, prayer, conversion, and revival. Psy- 
chologists and philosophers have devoted 
themselves to the investigation of these phe- 
nomena as they had formerly done to other 
normal or abnormal activities of the mind. 
They have tried to collect data from many 
sources on how men pray, their emotions after 
prayer, their reasons for praying, and many 
other related questions ; and the resulting mass 
of material, though often undigested, has re- 
vealed the fact that many men were actually 
praying and deriving satisfaction from so 
doing. The main difficulty with this kind of 
investigation is that the compiler of the sta- 
tistics takes so often a detached point of view, 
and is so apt to be a non-praying man, that 



PRAYER 173 

what is usually the richest source of any such 
observation — namely, the observer himself 
— is conspicuously lacking. It is not usual, I 
think, for a deaf man to undertake experiments 
on sound, although with care this might be 
managed. The work of any psychologist on 
the emotions is apt to be weak, if he does not 
have an inkling of what it is all about from 
his own emotional life. Of course he has a 
right to compile statistics from what his 
subjects tell him, but he cannot look at the 
matter with the sympathetic understanding of 
one who has also had an emotion. His discrimi- 
nation cannot be keen, and his suggestions 
are not valuable. Few investigators choose to 
work in sesthetics, if they have no feeling 
for the beautiful. Some doubtless do so, and 
record what others tell them of their delight 
in music, or of the difference in their appreci- 
ation of prose and poetry. But no one is apt 
to be a success in this field who cannot use 
himself as his own best subject. The whole 
matter does not branch in his mind, criticisms 
do not suggest themselves, and while the 
records of other people's comments may be 
faithful and exact, his own contributions must 
necessarily be of a slight order. The situation 



174 THE EIGHT TO BELIEVE 

in the religious field seems to stand in this 
predicament. The men who pray do not tell 
how they do it, as a general thing ; and also, 
as a general thing, the psychologists who tell 
us how it is done, do not do it themselves. 
Each side is a trifle suspicious of the other. 
The psychologist interested to observe but 
not to practice, and the praying man deter- 
mined to practice and equally determined not 
to be material for any psychologist, are not 
likely to draw each other's confidence. The 
general public takes it for granted that an 
interest in the human mind is likely to dimin- 
ish respect for its higher functions, and while 
advanced work in literature is compatible with 
piety, and one may be a Greek archaeologist 
with impunity, a religious psychologist is not 
expected ; and if he prays, it draws a side- 
long glance. I give this as the current opin- 
ion with which I am familiar, although it may 
not hold in all localities. I simply say that I 
am accustomed to see students approach their 
Latin, their art, and their history with a 
cheerful carelessness, while they darkly brood 
over approaching psychology, and their pa- 
rents are apt to shake their heads until that 
crisis is passed. There is usually some basis 



PRAYER 175 

for public opinion^ and it may be that the 
habit of observing one's own mind at work 
hinders the working, just as we have observed 
that thinking about one's separate movements 
in crossing a room does not tend to make one 
more graceful. But if we already have a habit 
of prayer firmly established, this period of 
self-consciousness will not affect it any more 
than the question whether the outside world 
really exists makes us cut our friends. The 
social method in which a philosophic seminar 
manages the question of the reality of the 
world outside one's own consciousness has 
nothing of this paralyzing effect. As we have 
already observed, the students embark briskly 
on the problem together ; they read papers to 
the listening ears of the world whose existence 
they are disproving, and they contradict the 
statements of their opponents with as much 
heat as if they were not phantoms of the 
imagination. You see them dispersing from 
the class by twos and threes, assuring their 
friends that they are not there, and enjoying 
the society of one another's nonentities. It is 
just because the discussion has not affected 
their normal life in any way but to make it 
more thoughtful, that all is as it should be. 



176 THE RIGHT TO BELIEVE 

But if ^ on the other hand^ this skeptical ques- 
tion cast a cloud upon the class, i£ from their 
very doubt they gave up arguing as a useless 
exercise, and took to discoursing with them- 
selves or to silence, the situation would be a 
critical one. Moreover, if they did not have 
a habit of social intercourse well fixed upon 
them, if they had become tired of speech and 
were looking for an excuse for eternal silence, 
here would be their chance. They would shake 
off the habit of social conversation as easily as 
they now dispense with their daily prayers. 

If prayer is considered from its formal side, 
as the recitation of certain devotional words 
which other men have written, the difficulty 
at once presents itself, of making one's own 
desires, one's own mood, fit in with another's 
phraseology. If, on the other hand, a man is 
left to himself to pray, he often does not 
know what to pray about. He actually does 
not know what to say. After asking for one 
or two things, his mind refuses to work, and 
he betakes himself regretfully to something 
else, feeling quite certain that his praying was 
not done well, but not knowing how to remedy 
matters. Any such discussion of the mechanics, 
the technique of prayer may seem irreverent 



PRAYER 177 

to some, but I believe that to be a false rever- 
ence which keeps any one from facing the 
facts. The situation is just this, — that in 
places of public worship, where a large num- 
ber of people are gathered together presumably 
engaged in prayer, a very large fraction of 
them in reality are not praying at all. Perhaps 
the minister is, and perhaps not. A certain 
class, we will assume, feel an actual communion 
with the Person whom they are addressing. 
Certain others want to do so, but cannot keep 
their minds on the matter. Their ideas go 
trailing off on afFdrs of ordinary routine, only 
to. be dragged back occasionally by a violent 
jerk ; and even when they are thinking about 
what is being said, they are still very possibly 
not praying. With the class which makes no 
pretense of paying any attention to what is 
intended to be prayer, we are not interested 
— although it is a large one. We belong to 
the class of those who would pray, but who 
do not know how, and our real state of mind, 
which we divulge to no one, hardly even to 
ourselves, is sometimes like this. The leader 
of the meeting has asked the participants to 
engage in silent prayer. We are in usual 
health, with ordinary prospects. Our friends 



178 THE RIGHT TO BELIEVE 

are well, we have no anxiety on our minds, 
and we do not know what to pray for. We 
have no idea what to think about. The prayer- 
book comes to mind at such a time, and we 
endeavor to repeat a prayer, and when it is 
said, we do not know what to do next. Shall 
w^e repeat the same thing over and over — 
that is, is there a virtue in mere recital ? In 
short, is there anything in prayer that differs 
essentially from thought, and when we have 
thought a prayer, have we prayed ? Certainly 
the testimony of every one would be against 
any such hypothesis. The recital has been 
most unsatisfactory ; it has left us where we 
started, and we know that we have not yet 
struck the root of the matter. If we state our 
difficulty to some one more gifted in the ex- 
ercise, he replies that we must think as if 
speaking to some one. The essence of the 
matter, he says, is that what we have thought 
has been listened to, and if we have a vivid 
realization of the presence of the listener, the 
exercise will not be such a barren, one-sided 
affair. To this suggestion we reply, that in 
ordinary conversation the interlocutor makes 
audible answers, so that a man knows that he 
is being Hstened to. If this response ends, 



PRAYER 179 

and he has no indication that his remarks are 
being heard, he stops talking, whereas one 
must pray on, without any response whatever. 
We are then advised to pause in the act of 
praying, to give a chance for response to be 
heard. But again our restive mind takes ad- 
vantage of the pause, and races off on its own 
concerns without waiting for reply. We are 
made sadly conscious that we do not know 
how, and that though we are willing to give 
the matter an experimental trial, we have not 
the technique which makes the exercise a 
satisfactory one. 

There have been giants in all the varied 
activities of the human mind, and there have 
been among them giants of prayer. We know 
that St. Paul and Martin Luther, St. Francis 
and Thomas a Kempis, were able to pray, not 
in the one and two minute periods which we 
can compass, but for hours together, and 
Jesus Christ, that master of the art, prayed 
for days and nights, an achievement before 
which we stand speechless. 

I venture to say that even though we were 
convinced that the suffering of the world 
would actually cease, if we prayed to that end 
for twenty-four hours, not one of us would be 



180 THE RIGHT TO BELIEVE 

capable of such a feat ! True^ the Bible^ our 
text-book of prayer, informs us that we shall 
not be heard for our much speaking ; never- 
theless, the saints of history have spoken much. 
They spoke not for the sake of the speaking, 
but because they had an abundance to say, 
and because they had an abundance to say, 
their prayer was really prayer, and their names 
are placed among those of the world's great 
men. 

All the relations between the human and 
the divine mind, or between the human and 
divine aspects of the mind of man alone, have 
to be considered from the view-points both of 
their significance and of their psychology. It 
is nothing against a motive of self-sacrificing 
patriotism to say that it is a psychological 
fact. Its value for life does not lie in this as- 
pect of it, but its value for psychology, though 
this is of lesser worth in the general scheme 
of things, is as real, and has as much right to 
be considered. In the same way, prayer in its 
perfect exercise, though from one standpoint 
a high communion, is from another a mental 
fact like any other, and some of the criteria 
of other mental facts can be applied to it. 
Prayer, for instance, as an attentive state is 



PRAYER 181 

subject to all the laws of attention ; as an 
emotional state, it expresses itself as do other 
emotions; and as thought in general, it de- 
pends upon memory, mental imagery, and the 
association of ideas. One must not attempt to 
do in prayer what one could never do in any 
other line of mental activity. One must not 
brave Providence by flying in the face of 
mental law, any more than one must leap 
from a cliff and expect angels to catch him. 
A law is a law, whether of mind or of matter, 
and there are, I believe, certain ways in which 
a man cannot pray, however good his will, 
just as there are ways in which he cannot set 
a broken leg, no matter how much his sym- 
pathy goes out to the sufferer. 

It is, nevertheless, one thing to make the 
foregoing statement and another to instruct 
in the art, and this indicates exactly where 
lies the weakness of all such discussion. Other 
matters are decided experimentally. The prob- 
lem is taken to the laboratory and worked 
over by an investigator and many observers. 
They expect to arrive at results, and they do 
sooner or later, so that any one else who wants 
the facts of such phenomena has but to look 
up their data, and he has the whole story. 



182 THE RIGHT TO BELIEVE 

Not only in matters of psychology, but even 
more strikingly in the other sciences, a prob- 
lem means experiment, experiment means re- 
sults, and results mean invention. I can 
remember distinctly my first visit to New 
York from my country home, and how I was 
taken to the window to see a wagon go past 
without steam, rails, or horses. This my first 
motor-car would hardly be a novelty now to 
a savage in the jungle. Certainly motors to- 
day go past the house where I once lived, with 
all too great frequency, and yet it was not so 
very long ago that I made my first visit to 
New York. Flying-machines will be upon us 
shortly, and one has but to suggest a possible 
device for which the human race might have 
a whim, to be tolerably certain that it will be 
produced without much waste of time. This 
rapidity of progress is alarming to those of 
quiet tastes, but to most young people the 
prospect is full of charm. Where shall we be 
in twenty years ? What new wonder will have 
become a commonplace ? We long to be in the 
onward march, and to utilize forces which to 
our forefathers were yet undreamed of. There 
is progress in general education, too, as well 
as in invention. We all start nowadays with 



PRAYER 183 

certain theories as a background, which to a 
previous generation meant the climax, or the 
destruction, of all their previous knowledge. 
The standard of ordinary intelligence is stead- 
ily rising, and many can now understand sub- 
jects which were formerly the privilege of the 
few. But how does it stand in religious mat- 
ters ? Are we on a higher plane in religious 
practice than we have ever been before, or do 
we pray as poorly as mankind has always 
prayed, perhaps worse ? 

Even if a man were not at all interested in 
prayer through belief in its value, but observed 
it solely from the view-point of a phenomenon, 
how could he fail to notice that this human 
function is apparently at a standstill? Day 
after day, Sunday after Sunday, the same 
kind of thing being said, the same average 
amount of time spent in doing it, and the 
same wayward attention and uneasy sense of 
unsatisfactoriness when it is over, in a large 
proportion of the congregation, — if indeed 
there has been any attention at all. I cannot 
think of any more striking spectacle than an 
assembly of people in the conventional atti- 
tude of prayer, but manifestly not praying. 
Many of them are conscientious about trying, 



184 THE RIGHT TO BELIEVE 

but they have not the art^ and the proportion 
of those who are succeeding is probably about 
the same as it was in Puritan days, in the 
Middle Ages, in the beginning of the Chris- 
tian era, and in the days of Israel's wander- 
ings ! We know more about science than they, 
we even know more about rehgion, but I 
doubt if any one now living could give Moses 
or Elijah any suggestions about prayer. 

I am insisting on this point simply for this 
reason. The current discussions of prayer 
approach it from a theoretical or from a 
statistical standpoint, and not from an experi- 
mental one. We ask whether prayer can con- 
ceivably change matters, whether there is actu- 
ally anything in it of value, and the question 
is apt to be left as one of theory rather than 
of experiment. Is a different method of paper- 
making, of shipbuilding, of ventilation, of sub- 
terranean locomotion, of telegraphy, of heal- 
ing the sick possible ? " Try it and see" is the 
answer we get to such questions, and we do 
try, if we are interested in the matter, until 
we have proved that our hope can be realized,- 
and our imagined possibilities can be substan- 
tiated. " Can prayer accomplish anything ? 
Is it an art that can be raised to a higher 



PRAYER 185 

standard of excellence than the feeble exer- 
cise of it to which we are accustomed ? Can 
we become real ' pray-ers ' in any sense like 
the great pray-ers of history who have wrought 
great changes in the world, and who them- 
selves attributed their power to this habit? 
Can we progress in this art, so that the old- 
time formulas will not be sufficient, and we 
must develop a new spiritual language, as we 
have a new scientific vocabulary ? " All this 
is a matter for experiment. "Try it and see" 
is the only vaKd answer, and the only reason 
why we do not try it and see is because we do 
not want to ! Here is an exact test for every 
man. "Do you know how to pray?" "Not 
very well." "Why not?" "Because I never 
have learned how." Again, "Why not?" 
" Because I do not care enough about it to try 
very hard." This is a frank answer, and states 
the difficulty accurately. 

We all play the piano somewhat when we 
are young, and in the press of other matters 
we drop our practice, and leave concerts to 
professionals. We leave off singing, we drop 
our sketching, we lay aside this and that ac- 
tivity in which, in our more exuberant days, 
we felt convinced we should be proficient. 



186 THE RIGHT TO BELIEVE 

because we have not the patience to work hard 
at them and have lost our ambition to excel. 
This is really the essence of growing old, — 
the weariness that settles upon us in face of 
a variety of activities, and the frequency with 
which we admit that certain subjects are not 
in our line. In childhood all the world is in 
our line, and praying is accepted with the 
same cheerful attention as our meals. We all 
plan great things, and in twenty years how 
few of us are remarkable in the lines we have 
chosen, any more than in those we have 
dropped ! As some one has remarked, " We 
all begin as originals, and most of us end as 
imitations." 

If we are at all interested to bring about a 
different state of affairs, what is the best way 
to begin ? We are all of us better educated 
than our forefathers, but are we any more 
efficient? We have greater social opportuni- 
ties, more travel, more work, more variety, but 
are we more forceful personalities ? Does the 
human race grow more impressive as it be- 
comes more complex in its organization ? No, 
our impressiveness and our force do not seem 
to keep pace with our culture. There is an 
ingrowing tendency to learning, and a rest- 



PRAYER 187 

less side of activity which prevents most of 
us from being human specimens who in any 
sense deserve the title grand. 

Why may it not be possible that this very 
lack in human personality, this failure to ful- 
fill its early promise, is due to the universal 
disuse, or insufficient use, of the exercise of 
prayer? I say this as a scientific suggestion, 
which might be made by any one, whether he 
was a praying man or not. The situation is 
this. Praying men — ^men who not only re- 
peated prayers, but who by the judgment of 
their contemporaries really prayed — have al- 
ways been marked personalities. Should we 
not expect them to be, if prayer means a real 
companionship with such a God as we have 
described ? It is quite possible that many of us 
cannot number such a person among our 
acquaintances, but if we can, there is a cer- 
tain efficiency of character, entirely aside from 
talent, which is noticeably present, whether 
causally connected or not. I have known sev- 
eral people who were raised from common- 
placeness by apparently no other character- 
istic than this. They were not gifted, they 
were not subtle, they were not noted for their 
mental capacity, but there emanated from 



188 THE RIGHT TO BELIEVE 

them a certain force^ which is conspicuously 
lacking in many more intellectual men. In- 
deed, intellectual men are by no means nec- 
essarily forceful. Any one who has been 
thrown with large numbers of students, 
whether their goal was a bachelor's or a doc- 
tor's degree, any one who is acquainted with 
a wide range of teachers even in higher insti- 
tutions of learning, knows that they are not 
all influential men. In fact, the current social 
opinion is that they are apt to be the reverse. 
Students in general, I believe, look upon their 
instructors with some pity, and aU too often 
have I heard such comments as, "He is an 
awfully interesting man in spite of being so 
learned," or " Such an instructor is reaUy very 
nice outside of lectures, you would never know 
that he knew a thing! " No, the highly edu- 
cated class is not as impressive as it sometimes 
fondly supposes. Now I venture to suggest 
that with all the chemists and engineers, the 
preachers and the doctors that are graduated 
every year, there are being turned out very 
few " pray-ers," if we can use the term in such 
a professional sense. I mean by that, I doubt 
whether any educated man, if indeed he prays 
at all, would be willing to do anything else 



PRAYER 189 

so feebly ; and if he could pray as well as he 
could bind up a wound, or construct a bridge, 
I believe he would be a more forceful charac- 
ter than he is at present. This force is difficult 
to analyze. It surely would imply nothing in 
the way of a public exhibition of his talent. 
But I am certain that we all see well enough 
what I mean, so that if two men of equal pro- 
fessional ability were together, one being 
noted for his strong religious nature, and the 
other not, we should take a second look at the 
former, and expect him to conduct himself in 
some marked fashion. This is not a fashion- 
able point of view at present. The tendency 
to-day is to cut off all useless exercises, and 
praying is regarded as one of them. Whether 
it is or not can only be tested, in my opinion, 
by practice ; and since non-praying, weak, and 
intermittent praying, formal praying, and 
shamefaced praying have been given a good 
chance through a reasonable number of cen- 
turies, it is not impartial or scientific to give 
up the other alternative without a try. More- 
over, it ought to be tried not only by the un- 
thinking mass of people who pray from habit 
and training, but by the same class of scien- 
tists who decide other matters for us. 



190 THE RIGHT TO BELIEVE 

To some^ no doubt^ this would mean a dismal 
future. They do not want to pray, they do 
not enjoy even contemplating the possibility, 
and the society of praying men would honestly 
bore them. Such individual prepossessions are 
bound to be present in every experimental in- 
vestigation, and every human being has as 
much right to choose his own religious, as his 
scientific habits. These non-praying men would 
come into such a test only as the background 
against which the contrary minded could be 
even more clearly defined. That is, every one 
would have to serve as either a positive or a 
negative illustration of the effects of prayer 
on personal living. 

The situation is one of absolute lucidity. 
Either there is something in prayer, or there 
is not. If there is anything at all to be gained 
from it, it will in all likelihood be valuable 
exactly in proportion as the praying is vigor- 
ous, well sustained, and " effectual.'' There 
are probably limits to the good effects of its 
duration at any one time, just as muscular 
exercise may be in too long or too short periods 
to do any good. But as in general a man is a 
better walker if he can go four hours instead 
of one, so a man will be a better pray-er if^ 



PRAYER 191 

when he wants anything, he knows how to 
pray until he gets it. The limits of this ex- 
ercise could be approximately determined by 
practice. The difficulty that few men want 
anything enough to be able to pray for it any 
length of time would perhaps be overcome by 
exercise ; that is, a greater desire for the spir- 
itual life might come with the asking. ^^Lord, 
I believe, help thou mine unbelief," is not an 
uncommon state of mind, and prayer might 
relieve it. 

The men who really pray, and who are 
willing to state their method in concrete terms, 
might tell whether they think in visual, audi- 
tory, or muscular terms; whether a certain 
amount of strained attention is a necessary 
adjunct, or whether prayer can be consistent 
with relaxation. Is it more effectual to con- 
ceive ourselves as addressing an actual Mind 
within our own, or one invisible but outside 
ourselves ? Is it feasible to hold the mind in 
suspense and to wait for real response ? How 
can this be done, since, psychologically speak- 
ing, it is impossible to think of nothing, and 
there must be some mental content even while 
one is waiting for possible answer ? How much 
repetition is justifiable? Is a certain emotional 



192 THE EIGHT TO BELIEVE 

state to be brought about only by repetition 
o£ prayer phrases ? Is this emotion valuable 
for itself; or entirely beside the point ? How 
should we characterize the states of mind and 
body when we ca7i pray, and those when we 
cannot ? That is, sometimes we certainly feel 
more like praying than at others ; are these 
times when we are rested or tired, busy or 
idle, when we have done well or done ill, when 
we have eaten or fasted ? In short, there are 
endless questions which a prayer pedagogy 
might raise and possibly answer, but they will 
not be answered by looking up treatises on 
the philosophy of it, and writing the questions 
in a note-book, they will be answered only by 
the experimental prayer of every student. No 
man was ever yet a vigorous thinker on any 
subject who depended wholly on the authority 
of other people; he will not be here. If it 
turns out that prayer justifies its existence, 
then the art should be passed on with the ac- 
cumulated wisdom of this scientific generation. 
Twenty years from now, a man should know 
whether he can or cannot pray better con- 
tinuously or intermittently, better with cer- 
tain personal habits or without them, better 
with active attention or in passive reverie. 



PRAYER 193 

better with repetitions or with the phraseology 
of usual speech. 

All this is a matter of opinion already, just 
as the world knew something about mental 
life from simple emotional expressions and the 
instability of attention to the more complex 
subconscious processes and hypnotism, long be- 
fore psychology as a science was ever heard 
of. We do not need to take courses in logic to 
know sound reasoning from fallacy, neither is 
it essential to study English merely to talk it, 
or hygiene in order to go in when it rains. 
Nevertheless, systematic experiment in science 
does tell us some things that common obser- 
vation does not, and one generation is able to 
advance farther from its parent, when the 
heritage is an exact science, than when it 
comes merely in the form of tradition or cur- 
rent opinion. 

To those who protest that such a systematic 
study of prayer is impossible, that you strike 
at the roots of devotion when you analyze it, 
I can only say that that too is a matter for ob- 
servation, and not for a priori decision. Cer- 
tainly if there is any analogy between prayer 
and the other arts, this criticism would not hold 
^^^good. We have all felt the difference between 



194 THE RIGHT TO BELIEVE 

the appreciative attitude of an artist and that 
of the untrained but emotional public. In a 
picture gallery^ the enthusiastic but ignorant 
give vent to such phrases as " heavenly/' " un- 
analyzable charm/' " exquisite temperament/' 
^^ poetry of imagination/' etc., all of which 
are good enough in their way, but which serve 
rather as outlets for feeling than as intelligible 
comments. The artists, on the other hand, speak 
in concrete terms of right and wrong colors, 
of accurate drawing, of composition, of treat- 
ment of light and shadows ; evincing less in- 
articulateness of feeling and more specific ob- 
servation than their non - technical friends. 
There is a certain college lecturer on Shake- 
speare who practices this principle in his classes. 
His attention is fastened always upon the 
meanings of words, the philological differ- 
ences between our usage and that of the Eliz- 
abethan period, and his argument is, that if 
a student actually understands the text in all 
the shades of thought which language mirrors, 
the poetry speaks for itself. If a student wholly 
understanding Shakespeare's language does 
not enjoy it, he never will, no matter how 
much he is assured that it is enjoyable. There- 
fore when a fine passage stands explained be- 



PRAYER 195 

fore his audience, and the interested visitor is 
disappointed that nothing happens but, " There 
you have it, I will not insult your intelligence 
by comment," he sometimes asserts that the 
feeling behind that sentence is too cold. His 
students understand him better. 

I have seen many concert audiences, and I am 
especially familiar with an American audience 
of girls whose pleasure in the music is often 
expressed by attitudes more or less dreamy or 
ecstatic. It has also been my privilege to fre- 
quent more sophisticated music-halls, where 
old concert tasters have taken their programme 
as one of the necessities of life. I have never 
forgotten one experience o£ a string-quartette 
concert, when my seat was in the midst of the 
other members of the orchestra, who, with me, 
were listening to their brethren's performance. 

No mystic attitudes here, but the most alert 
interest in the treatment of rhythm, of tempo, 
of shading, and of technique, and enthusiastic 
appreciation when these matters were well man- 
aged. It might be contended that the unin- 
structed girl gets more out of her experience 
emotionally than they, but even that I will not 
grant. With an emotional temperament aiid 
intelligence one certainly gets more from any 



196 THE RIGHT TO BELIEVE 

art than with intelligence alone, but granted 
enough temperamental background to insure 
any interest at all, intelhgence increases the 
interest rather than the reverse. Twenty years 
from now, the girls who knew something about 
music and wanted to know more will be the 
ones who support church choirs, local musi- 
cians, and strain a point to give their children 
lessons. The girls who repudiated intelligence 
as too cold a matter were in reality enjoying 
their own emotion rather than the music, and 
the test of time will show it. That the other 
alternative is true, that is, that intelligence 
alone is not enough for artistic appreciation, 
is obvious enough. As a certain museum offi- 
cial once remarked to me, " Women's clubs 
know everything about pictures .nowadays; 
their dates, their first and second manners, 
and their development. They do everything, 
in fact, but look at them," and I have even 
heard of what seems to me the final absurd- 
ity, music lovers for whom the material 
sound is too crude, and who prefer to listen 
in total silence, while an open music score 
^^ pipes to the spirit ditties of no tone!" 
Such a refinement is beyqnd any to which 
poor old Beethoven ever attained, who was 



PRAYER 197 

never resigned to his deafness, but who in 
spite o£ a vivid auditory imagination longed 
for his own harmonies to come back to him 
by way of his auditory nerves. 

That intelligence in religious matters is use- 
less without feeling is obvious enough from 
its barren results, and further from its final 
impossibility. One can never know the reality 
of the religious life unless he has had it, any 
more than a man born blind knows anything 
of color. Moreover, one will never know any- 
thing from his own experience about religion 
unless he has certain hopes rather than others, 
and these hopes indicate a feeling. 

We therefore must presuppose that any 
would-be religious man must have some feel- 
ing, some promptings to choose this way 
rather than the other, or the subject would 
not interest him to begin with. Is it equally 
essential that he should have intelligence? 
We must candidly admit that it is not. There 
is more real religion in an untutored but con- 
scientious man than in an intellectual man, 
who does not hope for a God. But is the re- 
ligious man more religious because he is un- 
thinking, or simply in spite of it ? Would it 
not be better for him, and for the world, if, 



198 THE RIGHT TO BELIEVE 

keeping his religion^ he brought intelligence 
to bear upon it ? It has been a more healthy 
state of society where parents have loved their 
children even though they unknowingly gave 
them the wrong food and air^ than one (if 
any has ever existed) where their state of 
mind was indifferent and they coldly gave 
the children their due in hygienic doses. In 
the long run, the feeling instinct has kept 
more children alive, I believe, than the purely 
scientific attitude would have done, for in 
the latter case there would be no motive. 
But it would be absurd to say that any woman 
was a less feeling mother because she at- 
tended to the hvoiene of her child with scien- 
tific accuracy. A good doctor is not less 
sympathetic because he can operate without 
fainting ; why, then^ should a praying man be 
less religious if he can tell the rest of us how 
to pray, not in vague terms, but in the most 
concrete fashion possible ? It seems as if all 
vigorous practice led to greater naivete. 
When men painted, they talked about grind- 
ing colors, and mixing them with water or 
eggs; those of us who cannot paint must 
needs grow sentimental or obscure. 

Christ, that Master of Prayer, said de- 



PRAYER 199 

finitely : Do not pray on the street-corners to 
be seen and admired of men ; Do not say the 
same thing over and over for the sake of 
speaking ; Go thou into a room, and shut the 
door, and pray thus and so, — and He gave the 
great prayer formula which all of us know. 
He did not pretend to exhaust this subject, 
or, in fact, any other. That was not His 
way, for His time was short. His definite 
charge to His disciples was that they should 
do greater things than He had done, preach 
to more people, heal more sick, see more of the 
world, — and among other things, why not 
give more definite instructions than He had 
ever done on the technique of prayer ? There 
must be a self-conscious period in acquiring 
the mechanism of any art. With a genius this 
is short, with most of us it is very long. Any 
one who does not have to attend to his tech- 
nique, because he is an artist without it, is a 
happy man ; but any one who refuses to at- 
tend to it, for fear his emotional life will not 
stand the shock, has an emotion sadly in need 
of props. If there is anything in prayer, we 
ought all of us learn it, and practice it, and 
teach it better than we have been taught. If 
there is not, we ought to stop it after a fair 



200 THE RIGHT TO BELIEVE 

trials and leave it behind us as another out- 
grown superstition. 

There is a final objection, which may 
naturally arise out of the very argument w^e 
have been advancing. Granted that praying 
may be a fine art with the spiritually gifted, 
we are plain people and cannot aspire to its 
perfect practice. The shoemaker must stick to 
his last, and those of us who must build and 
barter, sew and sweep, have enough to do to 
manage that, without attempting what would 
be beyond us. If praying is an art like writ- 
ing poetry, like poetry we must let it alone ! 

To some extent this may be true. There 
are doubtless diversities of gifts, and some of 
us will inevitably fall into the Martha class. 
Nevertheless, we must not be compared with 
others, but with what we ourselves can develop 
from our own material, however poor. If we 
take singing lessons, we may not sing like Jenny 
Lind, but we shall sing better than we could 
without training. Moreover, however the arts 
and labors of daily life may become divided, 
so that one man does our cobbling, while we 
do his building, this division of labor has its 
limits. A man may do your tailoring, but he 
cannot do your eating ; he may do your plumb- 



PRAYER 201 

ing, but your praying you must do primarily 
for yourself. ^Ye are parts of a social self, 
where in a perfect state every man would 
regard another equal to himself, and in which 
one man would no more rob his brother than 
his hand would snatch food from his own 
mouth. But we are also individuals, and some 
of our living, and all of our dying, must be 
done alone. You may affirm that the fine arts 
are not in your line, and while you live an 
impoverished life without them, you still Uve. 
You say morality is not in your line, and so- 
ciety, the rest of your larger self, shuts you 
Up or wants to. You say religion and prayer 
are not in your line, and while you do not 
cut yourself off from men, if you still treat 
them fairly, you cut yourself off from some- 
thing, and the only something that can bridge 
the gulf to the eternal solitude where lives 
your soul. 

If you do not hope for the bridging of this 
gulf, you have not read this book. If a more 
than human companionship and hence a prayer 
communion is, however, the substance of 
your hope, you have as good a right to be- 
lieve in its possibility as in the reverse, and 
beUeve you must, one way or the other. 



202 THE EIGHT TO BELIEVE 

If this higher possibility is worth anything 
at all, is it not worth more than our life would 
indicate, and is it too late for a new prophet 
to show us more clearly the way to its attain- 
ment? 



CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS 
U . S . A 



OCT 7 



1909 






Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: April 2005 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 

1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township, PA 16066 
(724)779-2111 



^ 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



■i ,• .^'m 




014 085 263 6 ||^ 



■. :'^ -it^ 









1 ■• 



'■■■''■• .''V'.-'. 'f.^t^i 



^:'wrv:;/-:>t^ 



' ■.,.'1' ••',«'.»: ^■■'•.•jwiA'.i'i:'^ 



■-■ \..-^^> ■•H■:^'■''■n^■»;■^■#»$■ 
' : >.' -■■■■ -.r ^y-i^pi'itSKiMmm 
,. ■■■■ ,■■,,.■■■ ,;!;>f A'?- 'i 1'i''- •'■'^'^'W^^IsLt 







•I ' 






